Texas Senate Approves Law Preventing University Instructors From Talking About Things These Senators Don’t Like

Free Speech

from the RETURN-TEXAS-TO-MEXICO dept

Texas has always been a bit weird about stuff. It sometimes views itself as a separate nation or, at least, openly expresses its desire to secede from this apparently abhorrent liberal village of hundreds of millions known as the United States.

Fuck it. Maybe we just let it float off into the political sea as a rogue nation more concerned with fighting “wokeness” than ensuring residents are able to heat their homes during extreme weather.

Texas only wants state-approved viewpoints expressed. That’s why it has targeted social media platforms with unconstitutional laws. That’s why the same state reps who claimed content moderation was evil are now claiming there needs to be more content moderation, lest the women of the state seek outside assistance to access (now illegal) abortions.

Most of the time, these absurd efforts get shut down by courts that aren’t nearly as interested in playing to this particular brand of “conservative” voters. Sometimes they get the support they don’t deserve, much less have case law to back up these assertions. All it takes is a maniac in a robe to declare some Texas bullshit ACTUAL LAW and we’re off to the Supreme Court races with the entire internet on the line.

Welcome to Texas. It’s like Florida but with more Stetsons. The ideas are the same: insipid, bad, unconstitutional. But the bravado is a bit more (as in “a bit much”), perhaps emboldened by the Fifth Circuit and its willingness to ignore a century’s-worth of precedent. Performing for the base, the Texas Senate has opted to be remembered as meddling execs in the medium of life rather than true representatives of their not-nearly-as-batshit-insane constituents. Here’s Kate McGee with the extremely unfortunate details for The Texas Tribune:

The Texas Senate approved a bill Wednesday that would prohibit a college or university professor from “compelling” a student to adopt certain political beliefs, a proposal belonging to a slew of legislation introduced this session that university and community college faculty worry will restrict academic freedom in the classroom. The bill now heads to the Texas House.

[…]

“What we are not for is when professors attempt to compel a student to adopt a certain belief, require adherence to a professor’s viewpoint, to a certain viewpoint. That’s another matter entirely. That’s what this bill is about,” Hughes said.

That’s not what’s actually happening. This is Doublespeak. What the Senate wants to do is force professors to avoid discussing things like Critical Race Theory. This is compelled silence, which is indistinguishable from compelled speech when it comes to the First Amendment. The government can no more stop people from talking than demand people speak up in support of its preferred views.

On top of that, the bill presents no “compelling” government interest to engage in this restriction of speech, one made a little simpler for the government because it targets people employed by publicly-funded schools. This makes these instructors government employees, which helps limit the First Amendment claims they can raise when fighting this law.

The few rational lawmakers left in Texas are bewildered. The bill claims it’s necessary to combat some sort of nefarious, college-instituted, forceful re-education of people the state otherwise claims are adults. Here’s what the bill does:

Senate Bill 16 would bar university professors from compelling students “to adopt a belief that any race, sex, or ethnicity or social, political, or religious belief is inherently superior to any other race, sex, ethnicity, or belief.”

And here’s a long list of those victimized by the current state of affairs — a free-for-all allowed to run rampant by the lack of direct government interference:

“My worry here is that SB 16 is a solution looking for a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Karma Chávez, a University of Texas at Austin professor who testified on behalf of herself before the Senate subcommittee on higher education last month.

There may be the occasional educator who requires people to swear fealty to their chosen beliefs to secure a passing grade, but those educators are anomalies. And they can be dealt with through the normal disciplinary process. Even if educators are “compelling” students to “adopt beliefs” on the regular, the state should allow schools to handle this sort of thing on their own, rather than simply demand professors refrain from discussing competing views on controversial subjects.

We can pretend — as the Texas Senate would surely prefer us to — that the state government is on the up and up, purely concerned about in-school indoctrination. But we don’t have to pretend. None other than the state’s second-in-command has unvirtuously signaled the state’s intent.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick characterized SB 16 as a ban on critical race theory in higher education when he unveiled his list of legislative priorities for the session.

In essence, the governor’s office has decided it needs to silence any views that might infer that white does not make right. Critical race theory may have its flaws, but so does the status quo, which tends to gloss over this nation’s history of oppression and violence against minorities. That someone might suggest there’s something other than the state government’s approved narrative shouldn’t be grounds for criminal or civil charges.

That’s what Texans will get, though. Unfortunately, this will undoubtedly receive a warm reception from far too many Texans desiring to forget what their ancestors did to secure statehood, much less what their ancestors’ contemporaries did to continue the oppression of minorities long after the 13th Amendment was ratified and long after the federal government stepped in to ensure states complied with desegregation mandates.

This is more than simple unconstitutionality. This is hate masquerading as public interest — something fully supported by the Lieutenant Governor:

“This session, there was no question that we would ban the teaching of CRT in Texas universities,” Patrick said. “Liberal professors, determined to indoctrinate our students with their woke brand of revisionist history, have gone too far.”

This isn’t governing. This is someone thinking they’re the second coming of Rush Limbaugh helping push through rah-rah bills full of stupid sound and noxious fury in hopes that the worst people in Texas will help them get re-elected when the next election cycle rolls around. Laws like these don’t serve any collective public interest. They only serve the performative asshats currently misusing Texans’ tax dollars to argue against their interest.

It’s a dumpster fire that was ignited by Republicans willing to cater to the worst base urges of their voter bloc. They set the fire. They should be man enough to board it and ride into the nearest, deeper body of water.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, academic freedom, critical race theory, free speech, paternalism, prior restraint, sb 16, texas, woke