The Texas Senate State Affairs Committee Chair recently held hearings at Texas State University on whether Texas should enact legislation protecting free speech on state college campuses. The Senate Committee asked fourteen speakers to testify on registration requirements of student organizations and obstacles for students to invite speakers to appear on state campuses, such as arbitrary security expenses. In addition, the Goldwater Institute submitted written testimony explaining the Goldwater Institute’s model bill called the “Campus Free Speech Act.”  The model bill was co-authored by the Goldwater Institute and Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

The Basics of the Bill

“The Campus Free Speech Act gives the First Amendment bite,” said Jim Manley, Senior Attorney at the Goldwater Institute and a co-author of the Act and report. “Where this bill becomes law, there will be real consequences for anyone—including protestors, administrators, or professors—who tries to prevent others from expressing their opinions. The legislation also provides robust due process protections for anyone accused of trying to silence speech.”

Following legislation that was passed in 2016 in Arizona regarding free speech on campuses, we now have hope of a state-level laws protecting free speech at public universities. The law, developed by the Goldwater Institute with the help of Stanley Kurtz at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, was based on the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report and the 2015 Stone Report .