Free speech protects the civil rights movements of the past, present, and future – Washington Examiner

The freedom to speak messages some people dont want to hear is essential to civil rights. In fact, without the protections of the First Amendment, there probably wouldnt have been a civil rights movement.

Fifty-six years ago this spring, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sat in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama. His crime? Parading without a permit. How was he supposed to get a permit?

Permits came at the discretion of a city commission headed by the infamous segregationist Bull Connor. The law said that, if in Connors judgment, the public welfare, peace, safety, health, decency, good order, morals or convenience require that [the permit] be refused, he could refuse it. Its not hard to imagine whether it inconvenienced or offended Bull Connors morals or decency to grant King and his allies a permit to march for equality.

Speech permits were only one of the tools used to try to quell the civil rights movement, but their legacy endures even today, as people working to express ideas and promote social change find their efforts obstructed or shut down completely by government officials.

At Kellogg Community College in 2016, Michele Gregoire and a few of her friends were handing out copies of the Constitution and asking passing students if they like freedom and liberty. Police arrested the group, charged them with trespassing, and booked them in jail.

Their crime? Engaging in expression without a permit. The colleges speech policy allowed it to shut down any expression that it disapproved of, and required pre-approval for expressive activities. The meaning of expressive was not clearly defined.

If that makes your head spin, think about, as a student, trying to figure out what you are allowed or not allowed to say, and where you are and arent allowed to say it. Then imagine spending time in jail for passing out a copy of the Constitution, including the First Amendment the only permit, ironically, that anyone should need to engage in expression in a public place.

Many universities dont require a permit to engage in expression they just flat out prohibit it unless it is limited to an ironically named free speech area on campus.

This was the case at Georgia Gwinnett College in suburban Atlanta, where Chike Uzuegbunam was told he could only tell others about his Christian faith on 0.002% of the campus, and only with prior permission. A similar case unfolded at Southern Illinois University, where expression was limited to a speech zone that comprised only 0.001% of the campus.

Often, the speech police do not enforce these restrictions equally. Students at Grand Valley State University in Michigan attempted to hold an informal event celebrating free speech by having students write on a free speech ball in a large open area on campus. They were threatened with arrest if they didnt move to a small zone that excluded 99.7% of the campus. Yet, on that same campus, a large crowd of students was allowed to hold signs and march throughout the campus as they protested the election of Donald Trump. The university only agreed to change its policies after our organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, represented the students in a federal lawsuit challenging the speech zones.

Even worse are policies (speech codes) that allow government officials, like Bull Connor, to determine if the content of someones expression is too offensive, or would, in the words of the law that put King in jail, hurt the public convenience.

For example, Iowa State University maintained such a broad policy prohibiting harassment that it said, First Amendment protected speech activities may actually constitute harassment depending on the circumstances, including whether other students believe the speech is not legitimate, not necessary, or lacks a constructive purpose.

No doubt Bull Connor thought that Kings expression was not legitimate, necessary, or constructive.

No fellow student or government official should have the power to censor speech for those reasons. Thankfully, the point of the First Amendment is to protect speech that some in society, including those in power, may not like. Indeed, as the Supreme Court held years ago: Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

Undoubtedly, some people will use this freedom to spout ideas which are wrong or even reprehensible. But this same freedom preserves the ability of the marketplace of ideas to test those values without the government putting its thumb on the scale, or dissenters in jail.

Over half a century later, as we celebrate Free Speech Week this week, we should learn from the painful lessons of pioneers of freedom like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We should shun the censorship of restrictive permits, zones, codes, and their ilk, and stand together for the freedom to speak ideas new and old, civil or uncivil. We should not fear the expression of ideas we disagree with.

After all, Sunlight is the best of disinfectants (as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put it), and truth should never fear the challenge of falsehood.

Caleb Dalton is a legal counsel at the Center for Academic Freedom of the Alliance Defending Freedom.

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Free speech protects the civil rights movements of the past, present, and future - Washington Examiner