OPINION

Under President Trump, the Justice Department is vigilant in defending the free speech rights of students across America and we are winning in court.

Jeff Sessions | USA TODAY

This commencement season, millions of families across America will celebrate the success of a new college graduate and millions more are looking forward to a loved one entering college in the fall.

As we celebrate these achievements, we should also celebrate the contributions that colleges and universities can make to our society.

To be sure, higher education brings economic benefits to graduates and to our country as a whole. But at a more fundamental level, higher education can help promote the free exchange of ideas that is necessary for a functioning Republic.

And while this free exchange is necessary, it is also historically rare and fragile. If we are going to preserve that free exchange of ideas, then the American people must remain vigilant.

Under President Trump’s strong leadership, that’s what the Department of Justice has done. We are vigilant in defending the free speech rights of students across America and we are winning in court.

Last March a student filed suit against Los Angeles Pierce College, alleging that it prohibited him from distributing Spanish-language copies of the U.S. Constitution outside the designated “free speech zone.”

The size of this free speech zone? Just 616 square feet — barely the size of a couple of college dorm rooms. Outside of that space, students did not have freedom of speech.

The student sued and we stepped in on his behalf in the case. We have told the court that this case affects not just this student, but the country, because it involves fundamental constitutional rights. Public institutions have no right to restrict someone’s constitutional rights to such a small space. Allowing these restrictions to continue would hurt many people besides the plaintiff because it would discourage them from speaking up at all.

We also got involved in Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, another “free speech zone” case in which a college had limited free speech to a tiny fraction of the campus. Georgia Gwinnett College allegedly limited free speech to just 0.0015% of campus — and even there students couldn’t speak freely. They had to get permission from campus officials in advance; they could only use the free speech zone at a specified date and time, and they could not say things that might “disturb the … comfort of person(s).”

That standard effectively sets up a “heckler’s veto” by conditioning the speakers’ rights to express themselves on an audience’s potential reaction. Under this system, all a listener has to do to stop someone from speaking is to act offended, no matter how reasonable, how peaceable, or how true the speaker’s message actually is.

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That’s the exact opposite of what the First Amendment demands, and it encourages people to act offended or to drown out opinions they don’t agree with. Freedom of speech is the law of the land, and attempts to restrict it must be held to the highest standards of scrutiny — not to the low, subjective standards of offense or discomfort.

Public institutions cannot compel or forbid speech merely on the basis of its content. Neither can they discriminate against someone merely on the basis of their viewpoint.

That’s why the department got involved when the University of California Berkeley allegedly applied a stricter set of rules to conservative student organizations than to other campus groups. Under the school’s policy, administrators appeared to have almost complete discretion over the times, places, and conditions of hosting campus guest speakers. That discretion made it that much easier for them to apply different rules to different people in an arbitrary and capricious way.

A group of students argue that that’s precisely what administrators did. They allege that by placing unrealistically burdensome requirements on conservative speakers — but not on other speakers — the school effectively discriminated against them and made it impossible for them to speak.

That’s unacceptable. For publicly run institutions, upholding free speech rights is not an option, but an unshakable requirement of the First Amendment.

And the courts agree. Attempts to dismiss two of these cases I’ve mentioned have been denied by judges who have adopted the Justice Department’s positions. A decision is still pending in the third.

Under President Trump, we are upholding the constitutional rights of every American student and helping public colleges and universities to fulfill their valuable purpose for society. This graduation season, that’s something that all of us can celebrate.