Tennessee Student Sues After Suspension for Off-Campus Memes
A Tennessee public high school student sued his school July 18 after he was suspended for posting memes ridiculing his principal, claiming the disciplinary action violated his First Amendment rights.
A federal appeals court held that a California public high school was within its rights after it disciplined two former students for creating and interacting with an Instagram account that shared posts targeting their Black classmates.
Texas University Professor Receives $165K Settlement After Free Speech Lawsuit
Dr. Nathaniel Hiers sued the university for infringing on his right to free speech by discriminating against his viewpoint, placing unconstitutional conditions on his employment, and attempting to compel and retaliate against his speech, according to the lawsuit filed April 2020 in the United States District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.
Utah Professor Sues University Over Required Pronoun Use, Argues Free Speech Infringement
Richard Bugg, a theater professor at Southern Utah University filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Utah Aug. 31. Bugg, represented by attorney Jerry Mooney with financial support from the FIRE Faculty Legal Defense Fund, argues that he is “opposed to the coercion of speech that is taking place on our campus and on most campuses,” the lawsuit stated.
Join First Amendment Watch and Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE) for a virtual taping of the So to Speak Podcast with Jacob Mchangama, author of “Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media” in conversation with Greg Lukianoff, Professor Stephen D. Solomon, Sarah McLaughlin, and host Nico Perrino.
Authors Share Excerpts on Free Speech: Robert Corn-Revere and the Censor’s Dilemma
In his new book, "The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder," Robert Corn-Revere asks a simple question: what characterizes the psychology of a censor? For Corn-Revere, the attitudes of moral crusaders have been fairly consistent over the last 200 years: they are marked at once by a rigid certainty that the ideas they target are indisputably harmful and an insecure defensiveness stemming from the awareness that most people will reject their attempts at censorship.
New Report Shows Uptick in Professors Punished for Controversial Speech
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education released a report on August 31st highlighting a growing pattern of university students and outside groups calling for schools to punish professors for statements they made on sensitive political issues. The study showed that the number of targeting incidents against professors has risen precipitously since 2015.
Former Guest Lecturer at University of Nebraska Sues for Free Speech Violations
A former graduate student and non-track guest lecturer at the University of Nebraska is suing the university’s board of regents for violating her First Amendment rights. Filed on August 26th in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska, Courtney Lawton alleges that the university wrongfully terminated her contract in September of 2017 after she expressed her views in a campus “free speech area.”