New Hampshire Leads the Way in Campus Free Speech

​New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) recently signed a new law that protects free speech on that state’s public campuses. HB 1305 declares all outdoor portions of public college and university campuses to be open to expressive activity, while allowing administrators to impose reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions.
 
This is in keeping with the Supreme Court opinion in Ward v. Rock Against Racism (1989) that allows the government to impose such restrictions. Critically, the Court majority also held that such restrictions must be content-neutral and narrowly tailored.
 
New Hampshire is hardly the epicenter of the campus speech wars. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) rates the University of New Hampshire as one of the best campuses in the country for respecting speech. Perhaps that is why lawmakers took notice when students at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law started a “Free Exercise Coalition” only to receive pushback from the Student Board Association in granting it official recognition as a school club. The group says it is “an open member coalition of religious students and their allies, all with a passion to see America’s foundational religious freedoms be restored and respected.”
 
The Student Board Association blocked recognition of the Free Exercise Coalition – as well as the student Christian Legal Society – for being discriminatory by holding traditional beliefs about sex and marriage. A faculty advisor for the coalition reportedly withdrew his name, making the group’s application to receive official recognition incomplete. It took considerable lobbying, with the backing of the First Liberty Institute, for the Free Exercise Coalition to be officially recognized.
 
Now, thanks to Gov. Sununu’s signature, the Supreme Court’s standard is codified into New Hampshire law. The new law also prevents harassment – “expression that is so severe, pervasive, and subjectively and objectively offensive, that a student is effectively denied equal access to educational opportunities or benefits.” In other words, it allows campuses to crack down on those who would exercise a heckler’s veto by creating an unsafe environment.
 
On New Hampshire’s public campuses, advocating hate and violence against individuals is now prohibited. Administrators must counter any antisemitic event that targets Jewish faculty and students, as has happened at Columbia and UCLA with “Jew Free Zones.” Restricting those who would shut down speech and students’ freedom of movement is fully in the spirit of the First Amendment.