Kevin Shaw was handing out Spanish language copies of the Constitution at Pierce College in Los Angeles when a university official told him he had to stop. I should have said a college official. That's a community college. Shaw, it seems, was outside the school's designated free speech zone, a space about the size of three parking spaces on the fo
Acre campus. School. School policy says people looking to distribute material or obtain signatures must get a permit, must stay within the free speech zone, and must do the work between nine am and seven pm. Shaw, who's the president of a libertarian student group, sued and now he has a powerful ally. The Trump administration this week filed papers supporting Shaw and saying the policy is unconstitutional. With us to talk about the case is enriqi ar Mijo. He's
a professor at Elon University Law School in North Carolina. Enrique, thanks for joining us. Let's start with that. The papers filed by the administration. UH just this week. What's the argument that the Justice Department department is making for why
this policy is unconstitutional? Well, Attorney General Sessions kind of forecasted the Justice Apartment's involvement in this case a few weeks back when he gave a speech at Georgetown University talking about the what he viewed and by extension with the Dustic Department, views as unconstitutional free speech zones on
public college campuses. The basic argument is that setting out a space within the campus where students can speak violates the First Amendment right of those students, Enrique, Have courts in the past ruled on these free speech zones and whether or not they are violations of the First Amendment that they have? There are a few cases on free speech zones, and unlike in a lot of other areas of free speech law, Um, the students here have an
unblemished record. I believe every federal court to look at a free speech zone at a public university has found it to be unconstitutional and just really based on this basic idea that the whole point of the university is to expose students to different perspectives and and it violates the First Amendment rights of student speakers to kind of limit, um, when they can say what they want to say. Well, Enrique, what's the best argument that that a college or university
can make in defense of a policy like this? Well, Um, there are many good ones. Uh, the school. Certainly at the K through twelve level, public schools have been successful in arguing that UM the restriction of speakers doesn't violate the First Amendment on the ground that that speaker or that speech raises some kind of UM material disturbance with respect to the educational function of the school. So a student can stand in the middle of an algebra test
and say, uh, I prost test algebra. I think it's wrong, or I think it's bad, or I think we should be learning something else. But but those are the kind of disruptions that really go to the actual day to day teaching and operation of the university. Free speech zones courts of uniformly found are not that kind of disruption where where the court will accept interference with students speech in this way. There seems to be a trend. Lawmakers in Colorado and Utah have approved bills that ban free
speech zones. Do you see a trend in across the nation in in banning the zones and expanding UM protections for free speech on public campuses. I do, and I think that's a good thing, and it really is kind of in a larger context of some things that have happened UM at Berkeley, and it's some other schools where it's kind of a very much a hot topic on college campuses right now, the idea that campuses should not discriminate UM with respect to who student groups bring on
campus and how the speakers are treated. Uh. In my view, this is a very positive thing for the First Amendment because, after all, as I said, and as the cases have said, the whole point of college is to really exposed students to different perspectives and and and and the college administrators and community college administrators should really see that as as their primary goal here. All right, let me try to
give my best defense of this policy. Um. So, Uh, the government does have the ability to to regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. And even though this areel on this campus is both very small and designated as a free speech zone, it doesn't mean you can't speak other places. It just means that you can't distribute things everywhere on campus, and it means you can't obtain signatures everywhere on campus. So why isn't there at least an argument that this
is just a time, place, and manner restriction. Well, the doctrine of time, place, and manner, which as you say, is really aimed not just um not at speech, but in the form that that speech takes, so that the argument there is as you said, Uh, it's okay to pass um bands on leafleting because the concern there is litter,
not what's in the leaflet. Well, I think those arguments tend to fall apart um in in college environments of open campuses, where students are interacting on a range of other issues and talking about all kinds of other things as well. And and when, of course look at these things, they actually start um with the whole idea of a free speech zone. And and federal courts have often said, um, does that not necessarily, by implication mean that the rest
of the campus is an unfree speech zone? Uh? And and and once the once an opinion kind of starts like that, you know that the that the restriction in question is doomed to fail. Enrique. And in some of the cases earlier in the year, there were invitations to controversial speakers and the schools wanted to limit the appearance to certain places because they feared there might be some violence in that area. Is the school in the have
a better case or are they in the right very much. So, I mean for for for the Attorney General to get involved in this particular cases is honestly a bit of a lay up. I mean, the the speech at Georgetown
talked about a lot of things. Student didn't just talk about, UH this free free free speech zones had talked about the the incidents that you're referencing, the free speech week at Berkeley and some of these much more contentious issues uh where where where speakers have been invited by uh student groups and have been shouted down, and they've been protests, and some of those protests have turned violent. UM and and university administrators are in a very tricky position. They
have very limited resources. So some of them, you know, some of the bigger schools can say, okay, we can handle um several hundreds and dollars worth of security to basically secure the speaker and the people who want to listen to speakers right to speak. But it gets a lot more difficult when you have smaller campuses, smaller public campuses, who bring on speakers who are controversial and who tend to elicit kind of very very adverse reactions and sometimes violence.
And I think what school administrators are finding is they're being critiqued for it. But if they very narrowly um state that the reason for kind of provoking an invitation is not because of what the speaker is going to say, or not even really because the speaker is controversial, but because we are not equipped to keep our students safe in the event of violent protests, then the First Amendment
question has become a lot more complicated. And I would actually be surprised if the Trump administration got involved in one of those cases. Despite what the Attorney General said at Georgetown, We're gonna have to leave it there. I want to thank our guest, Enrique Ramiko, professor at Elon University School of Law. That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law. We'll be back tomorrow. Thanks to our technical
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