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A First Amendment advocacy group filed a lawsuit against Virginia Tech on Thursday, alleging that the school's policies suppress its students' free speech and expression.
The suit, filed in Roanoke in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, challenges four specific university policies that the nonprofit group Speech First believes are "chilling student speech." The policies include ones related to discriminatory harassment, bias-related incidents, computer use, and flyering, which requires students to obtain approval from the school before distributing literature on campus.
"Through this elaborate disciplinary apparatus, administrators at Virginia Tech have intimidated students into silence, refraining altogether from expressing comments or viewpoints that might be perceived as controversial or offensive. This effort to restrict, and even punish, speech based on content goes against the commitment to academic discourse that is supposed to be paramount in higher education," Nicole Neily, president and founder of Speech First, said.