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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (33635)	3/9/2004 2:48:45 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793911

[Eugene Volokh, Do the university officials not know the law? Or do they just not care? The latest attempt to punish students for wearing blackface to a theme party, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: During the weekend of Jan. 24, the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity hosted an off-campus party with the theme "Straight Outta Compton," with guests encouraged to wear hip-hop clothing . . . . Two fraternity members showed up in blackface . . . . [T]he university has charged [the students] with discriminatory harassment under the student code of conduct . . . . They face a range of punishments including diversity training and possible expulsion. The university also filed charges against the fraternity, and a hearing will be held in a few weeks. . . . Uh, except that wearing blackface -- like wearing other potentially offensive costumes -- is protected by the First Amendment, and can't be suppressed on the grounds that it expresses a racist message (the theory of the harassment claim). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit made that quite clear in holding that George Mason University violated the First Amendment in punishing such expression (see Iota Xi v. GMU, 993 F.2d 386 (4th Cir. 1993)), but in any event it's a pretty straightforward application of well-settled Supreme Court precedent. Seems like an open-and-shut First Amendment case against the university here.