On June 18, 2026, Defending Education (DE) sued officials of the University of California (UC) system in federal court, claiming that UC’s speech policies violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Instead of encouraging a free exchange of ideas, many universities now try to shield students from ideas that make them uncomfortable. They do this by adopting policies that discourage speech from students who disagree with campus orthodoxy. UC, which has a long, documented history of censoring speech, is one of them.
UC’s systemwide Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment (SVSH) Policy is billed as necessary to keep a “community free from harassment, exploitation, or intimidation.” It applies to all UC employees, students, and third parties. Students and employees must complete mandatory “Sexual Harassment, Anti-Discrimination, Prevention and Education” (SHAPE) training, which teaches that “[i]ntentionally calling someone their name used before transition, as opposed to their lived name, is called dead-naming, and may be a form of sexual harassment.” UC’s Anti-Discrimination Policy also bans “harassment” that creates a “hostile environment” based on “gender, gender identity, gender expression, gender transition, [and] sexual orientation,” and UC counts failing to use someone’s “preferred pronouns” as “verbal” aggression, intimidation, or hostility.
The Supreme Court has called the college classroom a “marketplace of ideas,” but that marketplace cannot work without open debate, especially on ideas as important as gender identity and biological sex. Speech codes like UC’s are vague and overly broad, target speech based on its content and often its viewpoint, and, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed, are unconstitutional. In a recent survey of almost 70,000 college students, nearly half said they felt uncomfortable sharing their views on controversial political topics in class or with other students. That kind of self-censorship has no place in a free country.
DE looks forward to defending the free speech rights of its college student members in federal court.
Read the full complaint below:
