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The U.S. District Court for Southern Indiana granted a motion Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit against the trustees of Purdue University and Indiana University over a new law requiring trustees to implement policies regarding faculty tenure.
Back in May, the ACLU of Indiana filed a lawsuit on behalf of professors at both universities, claiming Senate Enrolled Act 202 violates the U.S. Constitution’s First and Fourteenth amendments.
SEA 202, which was signed into law in March, amends Indiana Code to require trustees to adopt policies that ensure faculty members’ instructional content is in line with “the principles of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity.”
Plaintiffs argued Senate Bill 202 infringed on their First Amendment rights in having academic freedom to determine what they teach without state interference. They argued the bill infringed upon their Fourteenth Amendment rights because the bill is “impermissibly vague.”
In its dismissal, the district court stated the plaintiffs lacked subject-matter jurisdiction in showing the bill creates real, not speculative, harm to their First Amendment rights.
“Whatever conflicts may exist between the Boards and Plaintiffs’ preferred curricula are—at this early juncture—not ‘fully formed.’ Id. Hence, Plaintiffs’ predictions as to how the Boards may or may not eventually implement the admittedly ‘broad’ aspirations of SEA 202 are ‘no more than conjecture’ and fall short of constituting a justiciable Case or Controversy under Article III. Trump v. New York, 592 U.S. at 131 (quoting Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 108 (1983)),” Senior Judge Sarah Evans Barker wrote in the dismissal.
“I carefully crafted Indiana’s new law to protect academic freedom, promote free speech and strengthen the quality of education Hoosiers receive,” Indiana Senator Spencer Deery, R-West Lafayette, the author of the bill said. “It was designed to withstand desperate measures from those who do not want to see changes in the culture and practices of higher education or who insist their narrow worldview is the only one that counts.”
“The ACLU of Indiana is disappointed and is currently considering options for next steps to protect academic freedom at our state’s public colleges and universities,” the ACLU of Indiana said in a statement to the Indiana Lawyer.
The case is Carr et al v. Trustees of Purdue University, 1:24-cv-772.
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