Jeff Sessions’ Justice Dept. Is Intervening in Another Campus Speech Case — Its Fourth

Updated (6/11/2018, 5:21 p.m.) with comment from Speech First.

Jeff Sessions promised that his Department of Justice would be more involved in cases of alleged censorship on college campuses, and the agency continues to deliver on his word.

The department on Monday issued a “statement of interest” in a free-speech lawsuit filed against the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor by a group called Speech First.

“The United States’ Statement of Interest argues that the University of Michigan’s Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities, which prohibits ‘harassment,’ ‘bullying,’ and ‘bias,’ is unconstitutional because it offers no clear, objective definitions of the violations,” the department said. “Instead, the Statement refers students to a wide array of ‘examples of various interpretations that exist for the terms,’ many of which depend on a listener’s subjective reaction to speech.”

The department has filed similar statements in three other campus free-speech cases. Two involve colleges’ use of free-speech zones and permitting. The other concerns a group of conservative students at the University of California at Berkeley who say the university selectively enforced its speaker policy in an attempt to censor their right to free speech.

The department also said it was concerned that Michigan’s bias-response team could be exerting a chilling effect on speech by disciplining students. The teams, which are meant to serve as a venue for students to report cases in which they feel maligned by someone else’s bias, have also drawn criticism from free-speech advocates.

The University of Michigan’s spokesman, Rick Fitzgerald, challenged the agency’s statement.

“The Department of Justice, like the plaintiff (Speech First), has seriously misstated University of Michigan policy and painted a false portrait of speech on our campus,” he wrote in an email. “U-M prohibits ‘harassing’ and ‘bullying,’ but the definitions of those terms have just been streamlined and are based on provisions of Michigan law that have been upheld by the courts.”

He added that the bias-response team doesn’t have the authority to discipline students, and that, instead, it provides support to students on a voluntary basis.

Notice of the streamlined definitions was posted on Monday on the university’s website.

Chilly Climate Is Forecast

Speech First describes itself as “a nonprofit membership association working to combat restrictions on free speech and other civil rights at colleges and universities across the United States.” The Michigan lawsuit is the first the group has filed, and it’s now soliciting new members.

“Have you faced a problem on your campus?” the group’s website says. “Students’ speech rights are threatened on a regular basis — but you don’t need to take it. Tell us what happened so we can help.”

Speech First’s lawsuit against the university includes a long list of complaints about its policies and practices, as well as the assertion that the campus’s climate chills the speech of conservative students enrolled there. But it’s not clear from the complaint how those policies have actually affected any of the three students whom Free Speech says it is representing, beyond the alleged chilling effect.

The three, identified anonymously in the lawsuit, “face a credible threat that the speech in which they seek to engage would be considered ‘harassment,’ ‘bullying,’ or a ‘bias incident,’ and would lead to investigation or punishment” for expressing their views, the complaint says.

Nicole Neily, president of Speech First, when questioned about how the university’s policies affect students, said, “Chilling of student speech and expression is our primary concern in this case.”

Melissa M. Carleton, a lawyer who specializes in higher-education issues at the firm Bricker & Eckler, said the group was alleging that the university’s rules acted as “a prior restraint on speech — basically, censorship from the get-go.” She added: “The harm being alleged is that it’s a constitutionally impermissible prior restraint on speech.”

The department’s new statement of interest is just its latest effort to shape the discussions of free speech on college campuses.

In September, Sessions declared in a much-publicized speech at Georgetown University that colleges were becoming “an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos.”

And Jesse Panuccio, a top official at the Justice Department, delivered a similar message in January while calling on colleges to punish students who disrupt speeches by controversial speakers.

Eric Kelderman contributed to this article.

Chris Quintana is a staff reporter. Follow him on Twitter @cquintanadc or email him at chris.quintana@chronicle.com.