Lt. Gov. Dan Forest is ready to place campus censors on academic probation.

The second-term Republican announced plans this week to work with state lawmakers on a bill to be titled the Restore Campus Free Speech Act, which would reverse a troubling trend of student speech sanctions at North Carolina’s public universities.

Forest said his bill would include a statewide free expression policy that nullifies college speech codes, punishes students who threaten or disrupt speakers, allows muzzled students to sue their university in state court and recover attorney fees and requires that all college freshmen receive an orientation session on expressive rights.

The bill hadn’t been filed as of this writing, but the lieutenant governor’s goals for the legislation are music to our ears.

Students, faculty and staff won’t be awash in newly forged rights if this bill is signed into law. Instead, the First Amendment rights the U.S. Constitution already guarantees them will be protected from college administrators who have bought into the culture of mandatory political correctness.

Three University of North Carolina System schools earned red-light ratings from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education for maintaining rules that clearly and substantially restrict student expression. Twelve have yellow-light ratings for problematic policies that can be used to suppress speech. Only one, UNC-Chapel Hill, earned FIRE’s green light for a lack of unconstitutional speech codes.

Six public universities — Appalachian State, Fayetteville State, N.C. State, UNC-Asheville, UNC-Charlotte and Western Carolina — encourage students to anonymously report “bias incidents” to teams of administrators and students online. These generally fall far short of hate crimes, which are a matter for law enforcement rather than college bureaucrats.

Bias response teams at these schools investigate students accused of saying things others deem offensive, even though mere words nearly always enjoy constitutional protection.

When taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for tattletale software and censorship squads, something is seriously out of whack.

The First Amendment makes it unlawful for government agencies to punish American adults for free expression, but public colleges have long acted with impunity. Federal lawsuits are the chief remedy for constitutional violations, and few cash-strapped students can afford to assert their rights.

Forest’s proposed legislation would not only banish speech codes, but allow those penalized for expression to drag their college president to the county courthouse for a day of reckoning.

As lawmakers draft this much-needed bill, they should ensure it covers the N.C. Community College System as well as the state’s public universities. The First Amendment applies there, too.

We call on each member of our legislative delegation to sponsor this bill and support it when it reaches the floor, where it ought to receive a unanimous vote.

Free speech is not a partisan issue. It’s settled law as old as the Bill of Rights, and it’s high time North Carolina acts to protect its young citizens from the misguided officials who ignore it.

The Wilson Times

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