UC Speech Code Challenge

From the Daily Cal: The UC system is facing a federal lawsuit over allegations that its anti-harassment policies that prohibit repeated or intentional misgendering violate some students’ First Amendment rights. 

National advocacy group Defending Education argues that systemwide rules punish students for expressing their belief that “biological sex is immutable” and require them to use classmates’ preferred names and pronouns. The complaint names top officials across the university and targets provisions of the systemwide Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment policy, which define repeated or intentional misgendering and deadnaming as prohibited gender-based harassment. All university employees, students and third-parties are required to abide by the policy. 

The advocacy group is asking a federal court to issue a preliminary and permanent injunction barring the UC from enforcing its rules on misgendering and deadnaming — as well as any similar policies across the university — and to strike them down as unconstitutional...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/uc/conservative-advocacy-group-sues-uc-over-misgendering-policies-and-free-speech/article_e9d75985-b7cc-451d-838f-2949f090a103.html.

The actual case is at:

https://defendinged.org/lawsuits/defending-education-files-suit-against-the-university-of-california-for-unconstitutional-speech-policies/; or

https://drive.google.com/file/d/114lK6NJKkDIZgeReexEfJrKKaRS4mABV/view. This is the kind of case that the plaintiffs may well be aiming at the US Supreme Court, which - in its current iteration - would likely be sympathetic, particularly because the plaintiffs raise religious freedom issues. (Non-lawyer opinion by yours truly.)