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The Daily Signal
Colleges Use
Tax-Exempt Status to Excuse Restricting Free Speech
Natalie Johnson
March 02, 2016
“Colleges and universities across the country need to be reminded of
their obligation not just to permit, but to protect, the vital free
exchange of ideas,” student Alex Atkins said. (Jonathan
Ernst/Reuters/Newscom)
Universities point to the tax code as an excuse to suppress free speech
on campuses across the United States, an education rights group told a
House panel.
Students, professors, and others, testifying Wednesday before the House
Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, said college officials often
are reluctant to eliminate “microaggression” policies and allow free
speech for fear they will lose tax breaks.
Campus activists define microaggressions as actions or comments that
unintentionally offend or discriminate against minority groups.
Alex Atkins, a second-year student at Georgetown University Law Center,
told the House panel that the university stopped him and other students
from campaigning on campus for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Atkins said administrators prevented the activity, saying the school’s
status as a tax-exempt nonprofit limited the ability of Atkins and his
group to use campus resources for partisan political activity.
Georgetown University denied Atkins’ request in September 2015 to
reserve a table to campaign for Sanders. The next month, it forced his
group to stop canvassing on school grounds to attract students to a
debate watch party.
Atkins said administrators told him his group was violating campus
policy, pointing to Georgetown Law’s 501(c)(3) exemptions under the tax
code. They said the IRS required the university to restrict students
from using campus resources, including space, to express political
views, Atkins testified.
Lawyers for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a
nonprofit civil liberties watchdog, last month wrote a letter to
Georgetown Law’s dean on behalf of Atkins’ group, charging that the
school misinformed students about the law’s restrictions.
“Despite the seeming severity of the restrictions on political activity
at private colleges and universities imposed by the requirements of
section 501(c)(3) … it is extremely important to note that these
prohibitions apply to the institution itself … not to individual
students, faculty, or staff engaged in clearly individual, unaffiliated
activity,” the lawyers wrote.
While Georgetown is moving to revise its policies in response to the
letter, Atkins said, the university’s actions hindered his group’s
ability to campaign earlier in the election season. The student
testified:
These changes cannot undo the nearly six months that we lost—six months
where all we wanted to do was engage in the type of basic civic
expression long considered emblematic of America’s educational campuses.
Colleges and universities across the country need to be reminded of
their obligation not just to permit, but to protect, the vital free
exchange of ideas.
Catherine Sevcenko, associate director of litigation at the Foundation
for Individual Rights in Education, testified that the practice of
private and public schools pointing to their tax-exempt status as
justification for policies that silence speech is a growing bipartisan
issue.
“[Colleges] were granted tax-exempt status because they have an
educational mission,” Sevcenko told the subcommittee. “I think it’s
deeply ironic that the universities, in an attempt to preserve their
501(c)(3) status, are in fact censoring people, censoring students,
which is undermining the very purpose that they’re there for.”
Of the 450 colleges and university policies studied by her
organization, Sevcenko said, 50 percent have unconstitutional speech
codes.
Modesto Junior College in California, for example, blocked Army veteran
Robert Van Tuinen from handing out copies of the Constitution to
classmates on Constitution Day two years ago.
A campus security guard told Van Tuinen that if he wanted to express
himself in public, he had to sign up for the school’s free speech zone,
which wasn’t available until the next month.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education represented Van
Tuinen in February 2014, ultimately winning a court ruling compelling
Modesto Junior College to pay the student $50,000 and change its free
speech policies.
But Sevcenko said legal action is time-consuming and expensive, often
meaning that students remain censored for extended periods of time.
The Internal Revenue Service, she said, needs to clarify its guidance
on political activity restrictions for 501(c)(3) organizations so that
free speech on school grounds is properly protected.
“Confusion over the IRS guidelines is a likely cause of this
censorship,” Sevcenko said. “General counsels are not going to allow
political activity that they fear would endanger the school’s
tax-exempt status. As long as the IRS guidance is ambiguous, censorship
will win out every time.”
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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