The ACLU is ringing the alarm bell over S.B. 1287, which the group alleges will chill school speech on Israel.

A bill making its way through California’s legislature would stifle free speech on public university and college campuses, specifically around protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and its occupation of Palestine, according to civil rights advocates.

As state lawmakers head back to Sacramento for the final stretch of the year’s legislative session, which often ends in a flurry of last-minute votes in mid-September, the American Civil Liberties Union in California is ringing the alarm bell on Senate Bill 1287, saying that it will “set a dangerous precedent of chilling speech on campuses across the state.”

  • ArbitraryValueEnglish
    33·
    3 months ago

    The ACLU’s objection:

    This SB 1287 goes beyond such protections in ways that would likely lead colleges and universities to silence a range of protected speech based on viewpoint alone. It provides no clear standards for identifying forms of conduct or speech that will be “reasonably understood by the victims or hearers” to “call for or support genocide.” It is also overly broad and will likely sweep in a wide range of protected speech and expression. The lack of clear standards also means that the bill provides inadequate notice of the types of speech and expressive conduct that it prohibits. It is therefore unconstitutionally vague in addition to being overbroad.

    Free speech rights aren’t for the purpose of protecting popular speech, but elsewhere even the ACLU acknowledges that campus speech is more restricted than speech as a whole:

    To be clear, the First Amendment does not protect behavior on campus that … creates a pervasively hostile environment for vulnerable students. But merely offensive or bigoted speech does not rise to that level, and determining when conduct crosses that line is a legal question that requires examination on a case-by-case basis.

    I don’t see why, even according to the ACLU’s own logic, the best possible approach isn’t for campus administrators to make this same sort of case-by-case decision regarding speech that supports genocide.