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Professors, campus free speech group allege the 2024 law violates First Amendment rights
At least for now, Alabama can enforce its 2024 law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and “divisive concepts” after a judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge David Proctor rejected a request from University of Alabama students and professors to temporarily block enforcement of the law while their case moves forward, The Hill reports.
The law “expressly permits classroom instruction that includes ‘discussion’ of the listed concepts so long as the ‘instruction is given in an objective manner without endorsement’ of the concepts,” Proctor wrote.
The students and professors, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, allege the law violates their right to free speech. They also claim the law is unconstitutionally vague, an argument that the judge rejected.
Proctor wrote that a “person of common intelligence” can understand terms such as “objective manner” and “compel assent” as the law describes them, the Alabama Reflector reports.
He also wrote that disciplinary measures only apply to those who “knowingly” violate the law.
The 2024 law forbids public K-12 schools and universities from compelling a student or employee to personally affirm or adhere to a “divisive concept,” such as white privilege, or require their attendance at a mandatory DEI workshop.
The legislation, SB 129, defines “divisive concepts” as arguments “that individuals should be discriminated against or adversely treated because of their race, color, religion or sex” or that “the moral character of an individual is determined by his or her race, ethnicity or national origin.”
Additionally, in a separate ruling Wednesday, Judge Proctor dismissed Gov. Kay Ivey as a defendant from the lawsuit, according to the Reflector.
Antonio Ingram, a NAACP lawyer for the plaintiffs, described the judge’s decisions as a “setback,” but said the students and professors will keep “fighting this discriminatory law that is, in our opinion, violating the First Amendment rights.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression also expressed disappointment in the judge’s ruling Thursday on X.
“Yesterday, a federal court endorsed the dangerous idea that in-class faculty speech is government speech. At odds with 70 years of Supreme Court precedent, this decision could allow states to muzzle faculty and declare any topic off-limits,” the campus free speech organization wrote. “Public university professors aren’t government mouthpieces.”
Earlier this year, AL.com reported that the “lawsuit claims the three UA professors who are plaintiffs have either specifically received threats of discipline from university administrators for alleged noncompliance with SB 129 if they do not alter their curriculum to avoid certain viewpoints and/or fear that they will be accused of violating SB 129 if they do not alter their curriculum to excise certain viewpoints.”
The professors also allege that they “cancelled class projects, changed curriculum, and elected not to teach certain classes as a result of SB 129,” according to the report.
MORE: Alabama’s anti-DEI law violates Constitution, new lawsuit alleges
MORE: Report details rampant DEI at Auburn, University of Alabama
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A judge’s gavel; Taurus Y/Shutterstock
