This is a great idea. It’s surprising that no one has proposed it before now.

The College Fix reports.

Bill proposes fines for universities that infringe on students’ free speech rights

Lawmaker proposes ‘Academic bill of rights’

A Republican Washington state lawmaker has drafted legislation that seeks to fine universities $500 or more for infringing on a student’s First Amendment rights. The proposal, if approved, would also fine universities that force faculty to use trigger warnings or punish students for saying a microaggression.

Rep. Matt Manweller, who also works as a political science professor at Central Washington University, said the time is now to put a stop to universities that maintain onerous speech policies.

“I think that much of America watched with horror as events unfolded at Yale and the University of Missouri this year,” Rep. Manweller told The College Fix in a phone interview. “When you see a mob screaming at a dean’s wife for sending out emails about Halloween costumes, or when you see a journalism professor prohibiting a journalism student from writing an article about protests, you really wake up and start to question what is going on.”

Manweller said he sees the restrictions on free speech — such as “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces” and “free speech zones” — as examples of a larger trend. Additional examples include a Title IX investigation against a Northwestern University professor for publishing an essay criticizing Title IX, and a student newspaper at Wesleyan University that was defunded for publishing a column critical of the Black Lives Matter movement.

As a professor, Manweller said he has witnessed the trampling of free speech in his own state. He cited a syllabus at Washington State University that prohibited the use of “racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, classist, or generally offensive language.”