Supreme Court Sidesteps ‘Speech Police’ Case at Virginia Tech

The Supreme Court ducked a lawsuit over so-called bias response teams at Virginia Tech, ruling on March 4 that the case should be sent back to a lower court. After the litigation was initiated, Virginia Tech rescinded its bias response team policy, thus mooting, or ending, the legal controversy. Two conservative justices dissented, saying the Supreme Court should have agreed to hold oral arguments to give a public airing of the issues involved in the case. A liberal justice dissented, saying the Supreme Court should not have vacated the lower court’s ruling. The case, Speech First Inc. v. Sands, is about whether university bias response teams, officially constituted bodies that seek out, track, and investigate reports of bias and threaten to refer students for formal discipline, chill students’ speech, and therefore violate the First Amendment....