IMPROVING HIGHER ED THROUGH BETTER OPEN-RECORDS LAWS. Colleges too often make a joke of these, perhaps inspired to so do by the federal government, which never met a FOIA record it found inconvenient or embarassing that it couldn’t find a reason to redact or refuse.

ALL MAJOR U.S. COLLEGES TO SUPREME COURT: BANNING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION VIOLATES THE FIRST AMENDMENT. Colleges have finally discovered a policy with a “chilling effect” on speech that they DO think is unconstutional, and, bizarrely, it’s banning racial preferences. Their reasoning is… interesting.

COURT: LICENSE REQUIREMENT FOR SHORT-TERM RENTAL MANAGERS VIOLATES PENNSYLVANIA CONSTITUTION. Great win for the Institute for Justice, and I’m proud that my law firm colleague Samantha Harris (whom the court labeled “entirely credible” — a good quote for your business cards!) and her property manager, Sally Ladd, were the victorious plaintiffs!

“POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY VERSUS CAMPUS AUTONOMY.” Could as easily be put this way: without campus accountability, there will not be political autonomy for campuses. You only get poltical autonomy when everyone thinks you’re doing an OK job.

“PRACTICING WHAT WE PREACH.” “Those of us who believe in freedom and who defend the right of pro-Israel students to express their views must take the difficult tack of also arguing for the very same rights for those who criticize and even condemn Israel. If the principle of free speech is to survive, it has to be authentically applied to all sides.”

TWITTER EMPLOYEES WRITE LETTER TO ELON MUSK DEMANDING CONTINUED EMPLOYMENT, “SAFETY.” Ahahahahaha no.

MOST PLASTICS AREN’T RECYCLABLE, GREENPEACE FINDS. “The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill.” You know what were totally reusable and refillable? The old glass pop bottles you returned to the supermarket, 40 years ago. Plus, sometimes you’d get lucky and get a super old-timey one in the carton (like this).

SO, POLITICO SAYS STACY ABRAMS WAS MAKING UNFOUNDED ALLEGATIONS OF ELECTION FRAUD? SEEMS LIKE A BIG DEAL… “The original complaint included allegations that voting machines were vulnerable to hacking and were switching votes intended for Abrams into votes for Kemp. Fair Fight Action found two voters who said they had to select the button to vote for Abrams four times before the machine’s screen showed a vote for Abrams instead of Kemp. Fair Fight Action removed this allegation in December 2020 in a revised complaint, at the same moment then President Donald Trump was making similar unfounded allegations in his effort to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia.” (Emphasis mine.)

Do you think Politico actually meant to say that Abrams’ allegations were unfounded, or do you think it’s more likely that they so robotically demand fealty to the sacred principles of “Orange Man Bad” that you always have to say Trump’s allegations are unfounded regardless of context? (And yes, I know the story is mostly about funny business with legal fees, but isn’t that pretty much priced in to everything at this point?)

CLERY ACT AND CAMPUS CRIME NUMBERS ARE A MESS. This is a quick look at the UNC system, but it’s the same everywhere, thanks to dueling definitions, confusion about meanings, and attempts to reconcile the minuscule crime reporting numbers with the repeated insistence that there is an epidemic of sexual violence on campus so bad that you’d have to be flatly insane to send your daughters there.

PRIVATE HIGH SCHOOL FORCED TO RECOGNIZE STUDENT’S RIGHTS IN MASSACHUSETTS TITLE IX CASE. High schools and colleges are unanimous in their conviction that contracts are something that happen to someone else. You pay them money (holy crap that’s a lot of money for high school) and they owe you nothing. Too many states and courts allow this. Glad to see Massachusetts isn’t one of them.

CAN COLLEGE WORK WITHOUT TENURE? Cairn University’s president says yes. But would it work everywhere? Without strong protections against academic freedom abuses, I fear the cure might be worse than the disease.

FROM THE U. OF NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOLS: “UPDATED MISSION STATEMENTS, COMRADE!” Weirdly, though (for these days), the news is not uniformly bad, with Appalachian State actually reining in some DEI-speak. But the Board of Governors should really be asking pointed questions about this stuff.

VIRGINIA DEMOCRAT LEGISLATOR TO FLOAT BILL TO CRIMINALLY PROSECUTE PARENTS WHO DON’T AFFIRM THEIR KIDS AS TRANSGENDER. “It could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment.”

At this point we’re in a race to see whether Russian nukes or deliberately turning the culture war hot destroys this country first.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: YOU CAN PLAY DOOM ON NOTEPAD.EXE NOW. Good, I was sick of playing it on my printer.

“RON SWANSON WOULD NOT BE IMPRESSED.” FIRE is demanding a Pennsylvania county parks & rec department allow a political candidate to collect ballot signatures in a public park or get sued. There is no more basic First Amendment right. The fact that such a threat is necessary is appalling, and is just another piece of evidence that at every level, too many government actors have become completely dismissive of even our most obvious rights.

TIME TO KILL THE LSAT? I have a hard time imagining that I did better on it after college than I would have before college, or that it measured anything different from the SAT – but with all the crummy lawyers out there, I am not sure making it still easier to become a lawyer is a great idea.

However, it’s undeniable that the law has become FAR too complicated for average people to navigate without constantly risking being totally bamboozled. It may be time for us to license a class of “lawyer techs” that can charge prices people will actually pay for routine yet complicated issues.

FIRE COMES OUT AGAINST (NOT SO) SOFT CENSORSHIP BY PAYMENT PROCESSORS. “When payment processing services act as political hall monitors or moral arbiters deciding what speech and viewpoints are out of bounds, they present a grave threat to free expression.”

I can tell you, from working there for 19 years (I was executive director, now I’m a Senior Fellow after moving to private practice), FIRE does not take positions like this lightly. We care deeply about private organizations’ right to expression, or we wouldn’t be free speech advocates. But the danger presented by the concerted efforts to choke off dissent in this nation, through means both private and public, is hard to overstate. When I started at FIRE in 2003, the only place Americans were likely to experience censorship was a college campus, and the victims were justifiably outraged about it. Thanks to Big Tech thought policing, hundreds of thousands (maybe millions?) of victims each year are added to that total. Those who think this can continue forever are fools who will drive us this country off a cliff if they don’t stop ASAP.

AT DAVIDSON COLLEGE: “FAILING INTRODUCTORY ECONOMICS.” Though given that not even Western governments can grasp supply and demand anymore, maybe the students are just following the trend.

“NY JUDGE RULES POLYGAMY ON SAME LEVEL AS COUPLE RELATIONSHIPS.” I actually thought polygamy would be the next big thing after Obergefell, rather than the explosion of trans issues. Polygamy is an ancient practice, and I have no idea how, under current law, one can sustainably justify (for example) telling a devout Jordanian Muslim that in this country, two men can get married, but that three of the four wives he married in Jordan simply don’t count.

For an even more fun thought experiment, imagine trying to explain the moral case for that distinction to one of his wives, whose marriage our laws have totally erased. Enjoy!

RICH VEDDER ON THE HYPOCRISY OVER AMY WAX AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT. A government with a clue would have coupled its illegal student loan jubilee with an illegal immediate ceiling on how much federal loan money students may borrow for school. If we can’t have rule of law (and it looks like we can’t), at least the eternal spiral in college costs and college wealth would come to an abrupt end.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE TEXAS SOCIAL MEDIA ANTI-CENSORSHIP CASE. Without even reading 113 pages!

WHICH N.C. SCHOOLS HAVE BIAS RESPONSE TEAMS? My alma mater Duke, of course, has them, and yet somehow the “bias” continues. Weird, huh? Honestly, you ought to be ashamed to be on one of these teams.

TWILIO ANNOUNCES 11% OF EMPLOYEES WILL LOSE JOBS IN ‘ANTI-RACIST’ LAYOFFS. So what you’re saying is that you laid off people based on their skin color. Awesome tactic there. Employment lawyers should be rubbing their hands with glee.

“WHY THE CANON WARS STILL MATTER.” Seriously, just say no to any further changes. Anyone who thinks at this point that the remnants of our culture need even MORE “deconstruction” is self-evidently nuts.

FOUR MAJOR PROBLEMS IN THE PROPOSED TITLE IX REGS: We briefly hit on two attacks on free speech and two on due process in our firm’s comment to the Department of Education about regulatory proposals that would roll back Trump-era Title IX reforms. It’s amazing how much precedent ED simply ignored. This might prove a bonanza for lawyers like me–in civil rights lawsuits, losing state insitutions pay the plaintiff’s fees–but it’s a terrible idea for colleges, students, taxpayers, and for our country.

And if you’re up for a much more comprehensive analysis of the proposed regs, check out FIRE’s comment as well.