North Carolina Passes First Free-Speech Law To Prevent Campus Censorship

chambertlo · 2017-08-02T05:09:26+00:00

I never thought that N.Carolina would be one of the first to do this. About fucking time people take a stand against the SJW BULLIES.

wasnew4s · 2017-08-02T01:58:58+00:00

I will admit. This is not the first place I would think would pass a law like this.

Riverscr · 2017-08-02T14:04:22+00:00

Disclaimer: I'm not your lawyer, but I am a NC lawyer.

Apologies for the terrible formatting.

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1) This is not retaliation against UNC Chapel Hill (the famous UNC). It is a statutory restraint on the UNC board of governors which regulates the state's publicly funded universities. This law only applies to NC's public universities and its effect is to codify first amendment speech rights into public university administrative code. Basically it forces universities to treat themselves as state actors and follow the federal constitutional standards for regulating speech.

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2) The most important part of this bill for a free speech advocate is §116-300(7). This section creates a positive right to listen to speakers exercising their right to speak at any state campus. There are potential problems with this section and the law recognizes that protecting a right to listen may interfere with protests and demonstrations on campuses. It will be interesting to see if universities can adjudicate protection of speech rights for both invited speakers and responsive speech that is protected. The answer is easy when either is unprotected speech, but this law requires universities to protect all protected speech and that requirement might be difficult to meet outside of a court's final interpretation. Which leads us to the best part...

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3) The most interesting part of this bill to me is the requirement in §116-300(8) to create an adjudicatory system to review free speech protections on state campuses. It's includes impressive due process protections compared to the variety of campus procedures applied for sexual assault and removing students accused of sex crimes from campus. This section mirrors the federal constitution's rights for a court trial and requires public schools apply them for administrative hearings about speech. There's a right to prior notice, examination of evidence, confrontation, counsel, impartiality, and appeal (*). The law is just a mandate that NC's public universities always treat themselves as state actors when they regulate speech.

*The law doesn't specify where appeals go but this section is about University vs Person administrative disputes so it would probably follow that path. I don't know where those go in North Carolina but that right to appeal absolutely leads to a court if you go far enough.

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Conclusions:

1- It's obvious that this bill had 3rd party support from out of the state because it is incredibly neutral and focused on speech rights rather than domestic politics. It's neutral to the extent that the democratic governor didn't act to approve or veto it and it even had an ounce of democratic support. (N&O Article) It's so neutral a law that I can't imagine that it would be targeted for repeal if the legislature swings democratic in the next 4 years. Attempted repeal would make a mockery of the formerly liberal free speech movements and be political fodder given for nothing.

2- It will be interesting to see how well universities apply this law. They all have their own counsel to help them apply it and set up a policy for speech review hearings. Potential issues are schools that try to regulate speech anyway and find themselves in court, and schools that are unfortunate enough to have a complicated issue that they are ill prepared to independently adjudicate.

OakQuaffle · 2017-08-02T06:04:36+00:00

Does this affect the private universities like Duke?

Fatboy36 · 2017-08-02T08:55:49+00:00

Yeah don't know what you rejoice about, if this affects private universities it's far from a good thing...

thrway_1000 · 2017-08-02T00:32:11+00:00

https://archive.is/sMMd5

2017-08-03T20:34:03+00:00

I guess that one amendment to the constitution wasn't good enough and we have to start passing new freedom of speech laws....

Title	North Carolina Passes First Free-Speech Law To Prevent Campus Censorship
Author	Imnotmrabut
Upvotes	282
Comments	15
Date	August 1, 2017 9:56 PM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/6qzmlo/north_carolina_passes_first_freespeech_law_to/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/north-carolina-passes-first-free-speech-law-to.916710 https://theredarchive.com/post/916710

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