SO WE HAVE A BLACKFACE SCANDAL at the University of Tennessee, and it rang a bell. And sure enough, here’s a post.

And here’s Eugene Volokh’s take from the then-new Volokh blog:

Uh, administrators, sorry to distress you even further, but the First Amendment gives people the right to be uncivil, unharmonious, and not terribly respectful of racial harmony. What’s more, it means that when you sanction people, you are violating the Constitution, and can be and should be sued and held financially liable.

The funny thing is that this very issue — people’s right to wear blackface — has come up before, and has actually led to a U.S. Court of Appeals decision, Iota Xi v. George Mason University (4th Cir. 1993) that made perfectly clear that public universities may not punish students for wearing blackface. But even without the Iota Xi decision, the right First Amendment result would be obvious.

Judging by the University’s response so far, they seem to have gotten that message. At any rate, it’s not like the students are going to just get off scot-free. If they’re ever Governor of Virginia, they will have to act really apologetic for a week or so. Then they can get off scot-free.

UPDATE: Note that despite all the sturm und drang, we don’t even know if the picture is of UT students. They’re just “thought to be” University of Tennessee students. That was enough for a three hour meeting with multiple members of the Administration. It’s not clear how much we know about the image’s provenance.