Case Details
Case Status
Settled
Location
Oklahoma
Date Filed
January 10th, 2023
On January 10, 2023, Speech First, a national membership group of students, alumni, and others that defends free speech on campus, sued Oklahoma State University (OSU) and its officials in federal court. The lawsuit challenged OSU’s Bias Response Team, which asked students to anonymously report one another for “bias,” its harassment policy, and its computer policy, which barred students from sending emails about politics.
The district court dismissed the case because Speech First would not reveal the names of its student members. Speech First appealed, and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the students’ concerns about protecting their identities were valid.
Soon after, on April 15, 2024, OSU settled. Under the settlement, OSU must:
- End and disband its Bias Response Team.
- End its harassment policy that targeted constitutionally protected speech, and let Speech First rewrite it to include the Supreme Court’s Davis standard, an important speech protection for students.
- Change its computer policy that kept students from sending emails about politics.
- Pay $18,000 in attorney’s fees to Speech First.
“Oklahoma State’s policies regarding their bias response team, harassment policy, and computer policy are clearly designed to monitor, investigate, and restrict student speech all together. The fact that students can’t even express an opinion without worrying that another student can use one of these policies to report them shows us that the school’s administrators have no interest in encouraging students to engage in the robust exchange of ideas nor in protecting students’ rights.”
Cherise Trump, Executive Director, Speech First
Read the initial complaint below: