The Supreme Court’s Bias Nonresponse Team

Justice Clarence Thomas filed a peppy dissent, but the Supreme Court was otherwise silent and cryptic on Monday in declining to hear a challenge to Indiana University’s “bias response team.” As a result, the circuit courts will stay split, since lower judges are divided on whether such campus bodies chill student expression. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals said no in Speech First v. Whitten.

College students aren’t always role models of tact and sensitivity, and codes of conduct are written for a reason. But at Indiana University they can use a website to file anonymous bias reports against one another. Urging everyone on campus to turn informant via an internet form has a way of lowering the bar. One complaint, Justice Thomas writes, “reported a Facebook post featuring a picture of a sticker reading ‘Diversity Divides Nations.’”