EXCLUSIVE — Missouri State University is facing allegations that its “bias response” policy infringes on the First and 14th amendment rights of its students, including by monitoring students’ social media posts for engagement with content that university officials deem to be offensive, the Washington Examiner has learned.
Defending Education, a conservative advocacy group, filed a lawsuit against MSU on Tuesday.
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The university has a policy on the books that punishes students for demonstrating what it considers “bias” against protected characteristics, such as race, color, gender identity, ethnicity, religion, faith, national origin, political orientation, or sexual orientation. When “bias incidents” are reported to the university, the student in question may be called in for meetings where they are informed about why their use of speech was inappropriate. If that isn’t sufficient, they may be referred to another university office with the authority to impose disciplinary measures, per the lawsuit.
MSU’s regulation of speech extends beyond the campus gates, according to Defending Education’s legal complaint. The organization’s complaint alleges that student speech on social media could be subject to university rules and that MSU keeps records of reported incidents to “monitor” and “track” bias trends. Indeed, the university bias report portal allows individuals to report incidents that occurred on social media.
“Missouri State’s bias policy and Bias Response Team chill the open and unfettered discourse that should be central to higher education,” the lawsuit reads. “The University’s bureaucratic procedures for tackling disfavored speech — and the vague, overbroad, and viewpoint-based definition of bias that triggers those procedures — violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
In its complaint, Defending Education states that it represents students attending MSU who say they cannot fully exercise their constitutional rights due to the policies in place. MSU declined to comment, citing its policy against commenting on pending litigation.
Scores of lawsuits have been filed across the country seeking to abolish bias response teams like the one at MSU.
Montclair State University in New Jersey, for instance, nixed a similar policy in 2021 after being sued by the Alliance Defending Freedom. But another group, Speech First, failed to strike down Indiana University’s bias response team when it sued in 2024.
Other institutions, such as the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Iowa, have voluntarily shuttered their bias response teams following concerns of chilled freedom of expression. MSU fares poorly in some measures of campus free speech, receiving an “F” grade from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
MSU, for its part, claims that its bias response team is non-punitive and simply intended to provide “mediation” and “consensus-building” services to the university’s community.
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“Justice Stephen Breyer called classrooms the ‘nurseries of democracy.’ But democracy dies without the oxygen of free exchange — something nowhere truer than on college campuses where free speech is a fundamental component of intellectual development and education itself,” Defending Education vice president and senior legal fellow Sarah Perry told the Washington Examiner. “Missouri State University eschews these principles for a ‘bias response’ policy that turns anonymous reporters of vague ‘biased’ speech into campus commissars. That kind of chilling of speech is an affront to the Constitution, and we look forward to rectifying this travesty on behalf of our student members.”
