Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, has banned “discussions about the number of genders” in outdoor spaces, reports The College Fix.
“Discussions about the number of genders has[sic] been determined to meet our definition of political content,” ERAU Director of Student Engagement Kelsey Tempas told the Young America’s Foundation members at the university.
“Thus, per current campus policies this event cannot take place in outdoor or other public spaces (including tabling locations). If you would like to shift your event to a classroom or other private location, I’m happy to facilitate finding you a new location,” she added.
The YAF members were “seeking to organize an on-campus activism event on the biological reality that there are two sexes.”
“Saying that indisputable biological reality and genetic science is too dangerous to allow in the light of day is a pathetic and cowardly stance for any institution of ‘higher’ learning to take,” YAF’s Spencer Brown says. “For Embry-Riddle, which claims to be the ‘world’s largest and most respected university specializing in aviation and aerospace,’ to be too weak to acknowledge the most basic of scientific facts casts serious doubt on its ability to teach the next generation anything.”
If this restriction on speech were applied at a public university in Arizona, it would violate state law, and probably the First Amendment as well. An Arizona state law, HB 2615, tells state colleges and universities not to limit free speech to particular zones.
But Embry-Riddle is a private university.
The First Amendment allows time, place, and manner restrictions on speech, but forbidding speech about particular kinds of content (such as political speech) generally violates the First Amendment, even when such restrictions are limited to particular zones on campus. In Khademi v. South Orange County Community College District (C.D. Cal. 2002), a federal district court held that several provisions of the school’s free-speech zone policy were content based and could not survive strict scrutiny. In Pro-Life Cougars v. University of Houston (S.D. Tex. 2003), another federal district court held that the section of the campus at issue was a public forum and that the university’s policy was not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.
But the First Amendment does not apply to private universities.
