The Justice Department weighed in on microaggressions Monday, filing a statement of interest in a case against the University of Michigan’s “bias response policy.”
The policy, depicted by the University of Michigan as “a group of professional staff” that “focuses on addressing incidents that may reflect bias against members of the University community based on their identity,” is being challenged by Speech First, a First Amendment advocacy group.
According to the University of Michigan’s own policy description, “The BRT works to ensure that appropriate University resources and expertise are made available to anyone who feels they have been harmed by bias.”
The explanation continues. “A bias incident is conduct that discriminates, stereotypes, excludes, harasses or harms anyone in our community based on their identity (such as race, color, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, age, or religion). Bias may stem from fear, misunderstanding, hatred or stereotypes. It may be intentional or unintentional.”
The DOJ released a statement calling the policy “unconstitutional because it offers no clear, objective definitions of the violations” and noted that such a policy “chills protected speech.”
“Instead of protecting free speech, the university imposes a system of arbitrary censorship of, and punishment for, constitutionally protected speech,” the Justice Department said in its statement in support of the lawsuit.
This is the Justice Department’s fourth filing regarding campus free speech since September 2017. The DOJ has also weighed in on a case at UC Berkeley, often remembered as the home of free speech, but recently in the news for flagrant violations of students’ First Amendment rights.
While statements of interest are effectively nonbinding declarations from the government, those within the Trump administration hint that such statements suggest a future Supreme Court case regarding campus free speech.
Justice Department Director of Public Affairs Sarah Flores highlighted the DOJ’s involvement in free speech cases at a millennial forum at the White House earlier this year.
“On college campuses, so many college students are being silenced,” Flores told attendees. “Keep up the courage, fight the good fight, because I think that the college campus is so important to setting some of these trends that will affect the rest of the country.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has also been vocal about what’s happening on college campuses, writing an op-ed about campus free speech last month and making several public comments about the need to diversify speech in higher education.
“A national recommitment to free speech on campus and to ensuring First Amendment rights is long overdue,” Sessions said in a speech at Georgetown Law School last fall.
