Professors who claimed Texas’s new campus concealed carry law would hurt their ability to teach had their lawsuit tossed from court this week, after a federal judge ruled they couldn’t prove they were actually harmed.
The three professors had argued that allowing guns in their classrooms would violate their First Amendment rights to a robust classroom discussion. One of them said it would impede “my and other professors’ ability to create a daring, intellectually active, mutually supportive, and engaged community of thinkers.”
But Judge Lee Yeakel said there was no concrete evidence anyone’s speech was chilled by the law, which took effect last summer and which allows students with permits to carry their firearms into school buildings, and allows weapons to be stored in dorm rooms.
“Plaintiffs ask the court to find standing based on their self-imposed censoring of classroom discussions caused by their fear of the possibility of illegal activity by persons not joined in this lawsuit,” the judge wrote in his Thursday ruling. “Plaintiffs present no concrete evidence to substantiate their fears.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton applauded the ruling Friday.
“The fact that a small group of professors dislike a law and speculate about a ’chilling effect’ is hardly a valid basis to set the law aside,” he said.
Nine other states, like Texas, permit the carrying of concealed weapons at higher-education institutions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
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