PROFESSORS’ BID TO BLOCK CIVIL RIGHTS LAW FAILS: Judge: Academic Freedom Doesn’t Bar Campus Carry: Ruling denies injunction professors sought to block new Texas law.

Specifically, the professors sued to define a right of faculty members to bar weapons from their own classrooms and argued that their First Amendment right to academic freedom gave them that right. The judge rejected that claim.

The ruling is only on a request for a preliminary injunction, and the professors’ lawsuit remains alive. Likewise, the ruling is only about the Texas law, not other laws or legislation in other states on campus carry. But the judge’s ruling on the academic freedom issue — one cited by faculty members in Texas and elsewhere to oppose guns in classrooms — suggests that the professors nationwide could face long odds in making the case as a matter of federal law that academic freedom gives them the right to keep guns out of their classrooms.

The academic freedom argument made in this lawsuit and by many professors nationally is that the presence or potential presence of guns in a classroom effectively limits the ability of faculty members to discuss controversial topics.

Judge Lee Yeakel rejected the argument.

Well, that’s because it’s a stupid argument. Like saying your little white girl couldn’t be expected to learn in a classroom where she had to sit next to a big scary black guy. Which people did say once upon a time.