Background
Four professors at Indiana University and Purdue University brought a facial First and Fourteenth Amendment challenge to Indiana’s “intellectual diversity” law and university policies adopted under it. The law requires state universities to consider whether faculty foster free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity in promotion and periodic tenure-review decisions, and it requires procedures for complaints and disciplinary action.
The professors alleged that the law and policies caused them to alter course readings, classroom content, and teaching methods. Indiana University professor David McDonald also had been the subject of complaints concerning allegedly anti-Israel remarks, but the university did not discipline him. The district court dismissed the consolidated actions for lack of Article III standing and denied the professors’ request for a preliminary injunction.
The Court’s Holding
The Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal because the professors had not established an injury in fact. In a pre-enforcement First Amendment challenge, the professors needed to show either a credible threat that the law or policies would be enforced against them or an objectively reasonable chilling effect grounded in a well-founded fear of enforcement. The record showed neither.
The court rejected the defendants’ categorical arguments that standing was absent simply because the statute operated indirectly through the universities or because the university policies were labeled interim. Nevertheless, the existing law and policies imposed only general requirements and did not show that the professors’ preferred, uncensored teaching would violate them. The professors had not connected their self-imposed curricular changes to a concrete mandate, and the record did not establish relevant enforcement against them or similarly situated faculty.
Because the professors lacked standing, the court did not decide ripeness, the preliminary-injunction request, or the constitutional merits. Judge Easterbrook separately concurred, joining the court’s opinion in full while expressing his view that the professors also lacked a plausible First Amendment claim because academic freedom and control over classroom instruction belong to the university.
Key Takeaways
- A law’s indirect operation through a state university does not categorically prevent affected professors from establishing standing.
- Calling a university policy “interim” does not insulate an effective policy from constitutional review.
- Subjective self-censorship is insufficient without a concrete connection between the challenged rules and a credible threat of enforcement against the plaintiffs.
Why It Matters
The decision leaves Indiana’s intellectual-diversity statute and the universities’ implementing policies in place without resolving whether they are constitutional. It emphasizes that plaintiffs mounting pre-enforcement academic-speech challenges must present particularized evidence showing how their intended conduct is arguably prohibited and why enforcement against them is realistically threatened.
The court also made clear that a later challenge remains possible if the universities clarify or enforce their policies in a way that creates a credible threat or an objectively reasonable chilling effect. Judge Easterbrook’s separate merits discussion was a concurrence, not the panel’s holding.