Academic Freedom

The Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declared unconstitutional the Trump administration's executive order withholding federal funds from sanctuary cities and counties. The AAUP joined an amicus brief opposing the executive order and supporting a permanent injunction preventing its enforcement. The appeals court held that under the principle of Separation of Powers and in consideration of the Spending Clause, which vests exclusive power to Congress to impose conditions on federal grants, the executive branch may not refuse to disperse the federal grants in question without congressional authorization. Because Congress has not acted, the panel affirmed the district court’s decision finding that the Executive Order was unconstitutional. The appeals court upheld the permanent injunction preventing enforcement of the order against the city and county of San Francisco and in California, but lifted the nationwide injunction and sent the case back to the lower court for a more searching inquiry into the need for such relief.

On June 26, 2018 the Supreme Court of the United States by a 5-4 vote rejected a challenge to President Trump’s September 2017 Presidential Proclamation 9645 (Enhancing Vetting Capabilities and Processes for Detecting Attempted Entry into the United States by Terrorists or other Public-Safety Threats)—referred to as the “travel ban”—restricting immigration to the United States by citizens of eight countries, most of which are predominately Muslim. In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the majority relied on the national security justifications for the ruling and held that the travel ban is fully consistent with Congress’s Immigration and Nationality Act as well as the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in dissent, lamented that the court had “blindly” endorsed “a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward Muslims.”

In a great win for faculty at religious institutions, and consistent with the AAUP’s arguments in an amicus brief, the Massachusetts Supreme Court held that plaintiff Margaret DeWeese-Boyd is not a minister of defendant Gordon College for the purposes of the First Amendment “ministerial exception” and thus she was entitled to protection by Massachusetts employment laws. The AAUP amicus brief explained why the ministerial exception, which is intended to prevent government intrusion into a religious institution’s relationship with its ministers, does not apply to the typical faculty member like DeWeese-Boyd at a religious college. The court agreed, finding that the “ministerial exception” did not apply because, while Gordon College was a religious institution, DeWeese-Boyd was not a minister based on what “DeWeese-Boyd actually did, and what she did not do” as a faculty member.

On September 3, 2021, the AAUP submitted a brief to the Texas attorney general arguing against a request from a state legislator for an opinion on whether teaching certain ideas about race, including critical race theory (CRT), would violate “Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, [or] Article 1, Section 3 and Section 8 of the Texas Constitution.” This request is part of a broader attack on teaching and training on the issues of racism and racial justice, manifested in proposed state laws limiting teaching on “divisive subjects” and in requests for state attorney general opinions forbidding such teaching. In advocating against the attempt to circumscribe teaching about racism, the brief focuses on Supreme Court First Amendment decisions and AAUP policy concerning the societal role of education, academic freedom, and teachers’ expertise in developing curriculum. Thus, the brief addressed the broader political themes that are behind many of these attacks on teaching and the AAUP policies applicable to these attempted infringements of academic freedom.