The Texas Attorney General’s Office and University of Texas at Austin on Monday asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit brought by three UT-Austin professors seeking to keep guns out of their classrooms despite the state’s new campus carry law.
In two separate court filings, lawyers for the university and the state argue that the professors’ claims that the law violates their First Amendment rights are unfounded. They also argue that the federal court doesn’t have jurisdiction to rule on the state law.
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UT-Austin, however, argues that “incidental impact” on free speech does not violate the First Amendment.
“Even if the … policy had some incidental impact on Plaintiffs’ speech, that impact does not implicate any interest that the First Amendment protects,” the university argues.
See here and here for the background, and here and here for the dismissal motions. More filings are due Monday, with rebuttals due Wednesday, and a ruling will follow, expected to be before the term starts. I still think the plaintiffs are underdogs in this, but we’ll see. The Current has more.