Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas slammed his colleagues for refusing to hear a case about free speech on college campuses, the Daily Caller reported. The Republican-appointed justice said in his dissenting opinion Monday that failing to take the case would let the "confusion persist."
The case involved so-called "bias response teams," which restrict freedom of speech rights on college campuses throughout the U.S. Some 450 institutions of higher learning have this model, whereby students are encouraged to file complaints against each other for bias claims.
Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito would have gladly heard the case, Speech First, Inc. v. Pamela Whitten, but were outnumbered by the remaining judges. Thomas thinks this was a lost opportunity to shore up this fundamental constitutional right.
"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. 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 wrote.
Speech First, an advocacy group for First Amendment protections on campus, brought the case against Indiana University's bias team. Their lawsuit filed in May said that students "credibly fear that the expression of their deeply held views" would be under fire on campus.
Those views included "that every person is either male or female" and that "the federal government needs to vigorously enforce our immigration law." The lawsuit was meant to expose the atmosphere these bias response teams create on campus against right-leaning or Republican students.
"This Court hasn’t addressed the free-speech rights of college students since at least 2010. Over that time, those rights have not fared well," Speech First's petition stated.
"Bias-response teams are designed to get as close to the constitutional line as possible, so it’s no surprise that they ‘have divided’ the lower courts," the filing added. Another Speech First case last year against Virginia Tech similarly failed to make it to the high court's docket.
Thomas also dissented from the majority on that decision with similar misgivings. However, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court's ruling without agreeing to take the full case.
While many of these institutions crack down on traditional values, other objectionable and even illegal protests are allowed to proceed. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump vowed to right that wrong, Fox News reported.
"All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came," Trump wrote on his Truth Social.
"American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter," he added. Schools readily allowed anti-Israel protests that turned destructive even after the nation was attacked by the terrorist organization Hamas while treating Republicans and conservatives with disdain.
College campuses used to be bastions of free thought and intellectual ideas. Now, the left has taken over and won't tolerate dissent from its students, and Thomas is right that the Supreme Court needs to intervene.
