Johnson v. Watkin
The California Community Colleges Board of Governors recently issued a pervasive set of guidelines that force faculty to embrace an “anti-racist” ideology, in clear violation of fundamental First Amendment rights.
Participation in the state’s all-encompassing political program is now required “to teach, work, or lead within California’s community colleges,” complete with explicit demands by the state to engage in professional practices that embrace this ideology.
A newly amended lawsuit filed by the Institute for Free Speech on behalf of Bakersfield College history professor Daymon Johnson asks a federal court to declare the rules unconstitutional.
Professor Johnson, a full-time Professor of History, has also been subject to unconstitutional, repressive rules and practices enforced by school administrators. These rules prevent faculty from exercising basic rights to free speech and academic freedom. Administrators investigate and punish faculty who criticize or question their preferred views, including state-mandated, administration-approved “anti-racism” ideology.
These administrators have sent an unmistakable message: anyone who dares commit wrongthink against the state-approved ideology—or who challenges other faculty who promote that ideology—can have their careers sidetracked or ruined. The administration will punish dissent, whether in the form of publishing op-eds, public debate, media interviews, or online comments with which the administration disagrees.
The lawsuit asks that administrators be enjoined from investigating or disciplining Professor Johnson for offering his viewpoints and seeks to prevent officials from demanding that faculty advance and teach the state’s official DEIA (“diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility”) ideology.
To learn more about Johnson v. Watkin, click here.
Gilley v. Stabin
A local university professor filed a federal lawsuit against an officer in the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion for blocking him from the division’s official Twitter account.
Oregon resident and Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley filed the lawsuit after being blocked by the division’s official Twitter account, @UOEquity, for seemingly no reason other than his viewpoint. Gilley had quote-tweeted a message from @UOEquity promoting a “Racism Interrupter” and chimed in with his own: “all men are created equal.” That, apparently, was enough to earn a block from the account’s manager.
“Nothing could better illustrate the problems with diversity ideology than a state university that bans a member of the public for quoting our Declaration of Independence. This lawsuit is necessary to defend our freedom of speech and the rule of law,” said Professor Gilley.
Gilley is represented in the case by attorneys from the Institute for Free Speech, a nonpartisan First Amendment advocacy group that defends political speech rights, and the Angus Lee Law Firm, PLLC. Under the First Amendment, the lawsuit explains, the interactive portions of the @UOEquity Twitter account, where users can post replies to its tweets, are designated public forums where state actors may not discriminate based on viewpoint. The Division of Equity and Inclusion also has no policy governing how users are blocked from its social media pages.
That lack of guidance is a recipe for state actors to exercise biased judgment about what speech and speakers they allow, the lawsuit warns. Indeed, that is what appears to be happening with @UOEquity.
The First Amendment does not allow the government or its actors to ban individuals from public forums just because they disagree with the views those individuals express. The lawsuit asks the judge to order @UOEquity to unblock Professor Gilley and to issue a permanent injunction preventing the account’s manager and agents from discriminating on the basis of viewpoint when blocking users in the future.
To learn more about Gilley v. Stabin, click here.
Lowery v. Mills
A finance professor sued officials at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) who threatened to punish him for his criticism of the university by threatening his job, reducing his pay, and removing his affiliation with UT’s Salem Center.
In a complaint filed in the Austin federal court, Dr. Richard Lowery, an Associate Professor of Finance at the McCombs School of Business at UT-Austin, said the officials at the state’s flagship university violated his constitutional right to criticize government officials. The lawsuit also claims the UT administration harmed his right to academic freedom.
Professor Lowery is well known for his vigorous commentary on university affairs. His articles have appeared widely, including in The Hill, the Texas Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and The College Fix. He questioned the UT administration’s approaches to critical-race theory, affirmative action, academic freedom, competence-based performance measures, and the future of capitalism.
One key target of Prof. Lowery’s critiques was the UT administration’s use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements to filter out competent academics who dissent from the DEI ideology.
The campaign started by pressuring Carlos Carvalho, another professor of business at the UT McCombs School who is also the Executive Director of the Salem Center for Public Policy, an academic institute that is part of the McCombs School. Lowery is an Associate Director and a Senior Scholar at the Salem Center and reports to Carvalho.
In the summer of 2022, Sheridan Titman, one of the senior UT officials named in the lawsuit, told Carvalho, “We need to do something about Richard.” According to the lawsuit, “he added that [UT] President [Jay] Hartzell and Dean [Lillian] Mills were upset about Lowery’s political advocacy.” Titman wanted to know if ‘we can ask him to tone it down?’”
Carvalho understood this as a threat by Titman, directed at Lowery, but initially refused to convey it. Carvalho explained to Titman that the First Amendment protected Prof. Lowery’s right to expression.
Despite this, the administrators ratcheted up the pressure on Carvalho and Lowery. When Carvalho again resisted calls to discipline Lowery over his speech. Dean Mills, the lead defendant in the lawsuit, threatened to remove Carvalho from his Executive Director post. “I don’t need to remind you that you serve at my pleasure,” she said.
These were among the UT administration’s threats to Lowery’s “job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, [and] academic freedom.”
Some in the administration even “allowed, or at least did not retract, a UT employee’s request that police surveil Lowery’s speech, because he might contact politicians or other influential people.”
“Fearing further retribution, Lowery began self-censoring.” He locked his Twitter account, which hid it from the general public. He also “stopped using Twitter entirely and has curtailed his public speech critical of the UT Administration.”
Attorneys at the Institute for Free Speech, a nonpartisan First Amendment advocacy group, are representing Lowery in court. Michael E. Lovins, of the Austin law firm Lovins Trosclair, also represents Lowery in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says the threats by UT officials “are designed to silence Lowery’s criticisms or … make it less critical….” The threats “also prospectively chill his right to academic freedom.”
The UT administration also “feared the possibility of elected officials scrutinizing their behavior.” As one employee wrote, when urging campus police to surveil his now-protected tweets, “we are more worried about the people he reaches than him. Some of his supporters are authors, podcasters, and politicians.” Lowery’s tweets often tagged the Texas Governor and Lt. Governor, which added to the UT administration’s concerns.
In addition to chilling Lowery’s speech, UT’s actions also “effectively removed an important part of his job duties by restricting” his academic freedom as a UT professor. The defendants deprived him of his right to critique ideas, policies, hiring, … and to otherwise participate in the life of the mind and academic dialogue on terms equal to his peers on the faculty.”
The lawsuit asks the court to:
- bar UT officials from threatening or acting on the threats made to Lowery for his protected speech;
- declare that the “threats against Lowery amounted to unconstitutional state action designed to chill Lowery’s protected speech and retaliate against him;”
- and award costs and attorney’s fees as provided by federal law.
The defendants in the lawsuit are three officials at UT-Austin, who are all sued in their official capacity: Lillian Mills, Dean of the McCombs School of Business; Ethan Burris, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the McCombs School of Business; and Sheridan Titman, Finance Department Chair for the McCombs School of Business.
To learn more about Lowery v. Mills, click here.
