Article from Reason by Robby Soave.

Speech First, a legal organization that defends the First Amendment on college campuses, has filed suit against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The group takes issue with three of the university’s policies: its restrictions on political leaflets, its bias reporting system, and the no-contact orders it issues to students accused of bias.

The first of these is the most obviously suspect from a First Amendment perspective. Students who wish to post leaflets or materials about candidates “for non-campus elections” must first receive permission from the administration.

“The University has no compelling interest in imposing a prior restraint on this category of political speech nor would this prohibition be narrowly tailored to any such interest,” the lawsuit says. “This rule chills protected speech and expression and forces students who do not wish to submit to this prior restraint to engage in self-censorship.”

Read the entire article at Reason.

Image Credit: By St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons