Constitution / Supreme Court Free

Constitution / Supreme Court

Free Speech and College Campuses

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has posted it's college speech code of the month of February, highlighting the University of Utah's policies towards print materials near or in campus residence halls. According to FIRE, the University of Utah's policy is written as such, "Housing & Residential Education will not approve any information that is deemed to be racist, sexist, indecent, scandalous, illegal, inciting, advertise alcohol or illegal substances, or in any way oppressive in nature," (Harris, 2008). What the organization criticizes this code particularly for, is the actual language used to determine school policy. "Scandalous" is quite ambiguous, and leaves open the opportunity for the University to unfairly use its judgement when deciding upon breaches of this speech code. Limiting anything beyond something intentionally hateful or degrading is against the student's rights at free speech. If a student were to take this policy to court, most likely it would fail to stand up because of the ambiguous nature of the language which gives the University more control than is merited in deciding what is said on campus.

Question 2.

There are several Civil Rights Cases which the Supreme Court will be deciding on in this 2008 term. Most of which are relating back to upholding or changing previous Court decisions and Civil Rights legislation, regarding the way it is upheld today in specific cases. One case in particular, Gomez-Perez v. Potter, is a case which deals with the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and what employers can do to protect themselves against former employees suing them for breach of this code. The ADEA states that employers cannot in any way retaliate former employees who are now seeking legal action, if the were wrongfully terminated, (Okamura, 2007). This case in particular, deals with a 45-year-old employee who is suing her employers at the United States Postal Service for not granting her a transfer request because of what she is deeming age discrimination. Modern day Civil Rights cases seem to be cases questioning earlier Civil Rights litigation and decisions, rather than the cases of the 1950's and 1960's where essential and ground breaking decisions were made which affected the entire nation.