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The Supreme Court will not take up a case concerning the bias-response team at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, due to the fact that the university already discontinued the program for reasons unrelated to litigation, NBC News reported Monday.
Bias-response teams—groups on college campuses that respond to anonymously reported instances of bigotry or discrimination—have come under fire from free speech advocates for discouraging controversial speech. Proponents argue that such teams are intended merely to engage students in educational conversations about bias and to help keep track of such incidents on campus.
Speech First, a campus free speech nonprofit, sued Virginia Tech in 2021, arguing that its bias-response team policy—which directed bias complaints to a panel that included administrators and representatives of the campus police—violated students’ First Amendment rights. Virginia Tech countered that the reports would not result in any punishment.
A federal judge ruled in the university’s favor; the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Va., later upheld that decision.
Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision not to take the case.
