An interesting piece in the Wall St Journal about a piece of obviously mad legislation unless of course you have a Texas state of mind ….
WSJ write..
A legal challenge brought by three University of Texas-Austin professors against the state’s new “campus carry” law suffered a setback after a federal judge denied them a preliminary injunction.
The professors’ lawsuit opposes a Texas law that took effect this month permitting licensed gun owners who are at least 21 years old to carry concealed weapons on public campuses with some exceptions. The measure, which exempts private institutions, prohibits public university professors from banning guns from their classrooms, according to the state attorney general’s office.
As Law Blog previously reported, three UT-Austin professors sued the state and their school in July, asking the court to grant an injunction that would allow them to forbid students from carrying a weapon into class.
The professors claim that requiring them to teach possibly armed students would “chill” their First Amendment rights by hindering free classroom discussion. The chance that a student is armed, they argue, would make the teachers afraid of exploring subjects that might provoke heated reactions.
Denying the injunction Monday, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel was skeptical of the First Amendment claim, writing:
Perhaps they are correct. But the Campus Carry Law and Policy do not direct Plaintiffs either toward or away from any particular subject or point of view. The provisions do not prohibit, require, or even mention any form of speech by professors of the University. The burden of which Plaintiffs complain therefore does not fit within any recognized right of academic freedom.
The court has searched the jurisprudence of this country from the ratification of the Constitution forward and has found no precedent for Plaintiffs’ proposition that there is a right of academic freedom so broad that it allows them such autonomous control of their classrooms—both physically and academically—that their concerns override decisions of the legislature and the governing body of the institution that employs them. Their First Amendment claim is and must be bottomed on their right to speak and teach freely. Neither the Campus Carry Law nor the Campus Carry Policy forbids them from doing so. This is fatal to their attempt at this stage in the proceedings to establish a substantial likelihood that their case will succeed on the merits.
The judge also considered an equal-protection claim made by the professors, who argued that the state lacked a rational basis for requiring professors to allow handguns in college classrooms. Wrote the judge:
The court concludes at this stage in the proceedings that requiring public universities to allow licensed individuals to carry concealed handguns is a basis for the Campus Carry Law that bears a debatably rational relationship to the conceivable legitimate governmental end of enabling individuals to defend themselves.
Malcolm Greenstein, an Austin attorney who represents the professors, told Law Blog he was “disappointed” by the ruling but hopes the case will come to trial.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he was “pleased but not surprised” by the outcome. “There is simply no legal justification to deny licensed, law-abiding citizens on campus the same measure of personal protection they are entitled to elsewhere in Texas,” he said in a statement.
