Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Challenge to College Bias Teams, Clarence Thomas Warns of “Patchwork” First Amendment Rights
In a disappointing blow to student free speech advocates, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up a legal challenge to bias response teams on college campuses — systems widely criticized as tools for censoring conservative viewpoints.
Despite dissents from Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the high court refused to hear a lawsuit filed by Speech First, a pro-First Amendment nonprofit, against Indiana University officials. The group argued that bias response teams chill student expression by inviting anonymous reports of so-called “bias incidents” — often leading to disciplinary actions against students for expressing views deemed politically incorrect.
“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,”
— Justice Clarence Thomas
Speech First had hoped the Indiana case would force the Court to confront a growing circuit split on whether students can sue when these teams silence protected speech under the First Amendment.
“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,”
— Thomas, echoing his earlier dissent in a similar case involving Virginia Tech
Bias response teams have become common tools used by left-leaning academic bureaucracies to monitor and punish ideological dissent. While university lawyers argued there’s no legal conflict, Speech First warned that the real conflict is in the targeting of dissenting views, especially conservative and religious voices.
“Precisely because speech codes are often struck down, universities have looked for subtler, more sophisticated ways to chill disfavored speech. Enter the bias-response team,”
— Speech First petition
“Instead of outright banning biased speech, these teams deter it by threatening students with adverse consequences. They also burden it by imposing a series of administrative and other costs on students who commit ‘bias incidents.’”
Indiana officials described the group as a “frequent flier of lawsuits” and asked the court to reject the case, claiming no real legal disagreement exists. But that narrative doesn’t reflect the growing number of universities quietly backing away from such teams in the face of legal pressure — as Virginia Tech did after facing a similar challenge from Speech First last year.
Court Also Rejects Buffer Zone Challenges from Pro-Life Groups
The justices also declined to hear two separate challenges to abortion clinic buffer zone laws in Illinois and New Jersey, denying a chance to overturn the controversial 2000 Hill v. Colorado ruling — a decision long criticized by conservative legal scholars as a violation of pro-life Americans’ First Amendment rights.
The rejected cases involved sidewalk counselors in Carbondale, Illinois and Englewood, New Jersey who argued that their right to offer peaceful counseling was being suppressed by local ordinances. Once again, Justices Thomas and Alito dissented, but the Court fell short of the four votes needed to take the cases.
“Hill has been seriously undermined, if not completely eroded, and our refusal to provide clarity is an abdication of our judicial duty,”
— Justice Thomas
The Carbondale case was brought by Coalition Life, represented by conservative legal heavyweight Paul Clement, a former U.S. Solicitor General. Clement argued that Hill v. Colorado was “wrong the day it was decided,” and likened the request to overturn it to the Court’s landmark reversal of Roe v. Wade.
“The case for overruling [Hill] has only strengthened ever since,”
— Clement wrote in the petition
Opponents of these challenges, like former Obama acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, urged the Court to stay out of the dispute, arguing that the cases were too fact-specific to warrant a constitutional review.
In Englewood, local resident Jeryl Turco challenged a buffer zone law imposed in response to disruptive protests by a group called Bread of Life. Turco, who was not affiliated with the group, argued that her peaceful counseling was unfairly censored. She was represented by Jay Sekulow, the American Center for Law and Justice’s lead counsel and a former attorney for President Donald Trump.
“This case is extremely fact-sensitive and involves material credibility issues,”
— Englewood’s legal team argued, urging the Court to dismiss the petition
Despite these legal setbacks, momentum is growing in conservative legal circles to revisit and overturn Hill v. Colorado, just as the Court did with Roe — restoring free speech rights for pro-life Americans who seek to peacefully engage women outside abortion clinics.