Justices again reject case against bias response teams

The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a case regarding the constitutionality of bias response teams on college campuses, The Hill reported.

With conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting, the court said it would not consider a lawsuit brought against Indiana University by Speech First, a student First Amendment rights group that has sued numerous higher ed institutions for using bias response teams to evaluate reports of alleged bias on campus.

“Bias-response teams are the latest in a long-running effort by universities to deter certain undesirable speech,” the advocacy group wrote in court documents. “Instead of allowing free-ranging debate, many colleges are more interested in protecting students from ideas that make them uncomfortable.”

The case previously lost at the Seventh Circuit Court, which agreed with a lower court that Speech First—established by five Indiana University students—failed to demonstrate that the existence of a bias response team created an “objectively reasonable chilling effect” on their free speech, Courthouse News Service reported.

In urging the Supreme Court to reject the case, lawyers for Indiana called Speech First a “frequent flier of lawsuits against higher-education institutions,” UPI reported.

A year ago, the Supreme Court refused to hear a similar case against Virginia Tech.

But in his dissent, Justice Thomas wrote, “Given the number of schools with bias response teams, this Court eventually will need to resolve the split over a student’s right to challenge such programs. The Court’s refusal to intervene now leaves students subject to a ‘patchwork of First Amendment rights,’ with a student’s ability to challenge his university’s bias response policies varying depending on accidents of geography.”