Tag: bill

  • It’s Expensive to Become a Teacher in California. This Bill Would Pay Those Who Try – The 74

    It’s Expensive to Become a Teacher in California. This Bill Would Pay Those Who Try – The 74


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    When Brigitta Hunter started her teaching career, she had $20,000 in student loans and zero income – even though she was working nearly full time in the classroom.

    “We lived on my husband’s pathetic little paycheck. I don’t know how we did it,” Hunter said. “And we were lucky – he had a job and my loans weren’t that bad. It can be almost impossible for some people.”

    Each year, about 28,000 people in California work for free for about a year as teachers or classroom aides while they complete the requirements for their teaching credentials. That year without pay can be a dire hardship for many aspiring teachers, even deterring them from pursuing the profession.

    A new bill by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance, would set aside money for school districts to pay would-be teachers while they do their student teaching service. The goal is to help alleviate the teacher shortage and attract lower-income candidates to the profession.

    “Nothing makes a bigger difference in improving the quality of public education than getting highly qualified teachers in the classroom,” Muratsuchi said. “This bill helps remove some of the obstacles to that.”

    Big loans, low pay

    To be a K-12 public school teacher in California, candidates need a bachelor’s degree and a teaching credential, typically earned after completing a one-year program combining coursework and 600 hours of classroom experience. During that time, candidates work with veteran teachers or lead their own classes.

    Teacher credential programs cost between $20,000 and $40,000, depending on where a student enrolls and where they live. In 2020, about 60% of teachers borrowed money to finish their degrees, according to a recent study by the Learning Policy Institute, with loans averaging about $30,000 for a four-year bachelor’s degree and a credential program.

    Entering the profession with hefty student loans can be demoralizing and stressful, the report said, adding to the challenges new teachers face. The average starting teacher salary in California is $58,000, according to the National Education Association, among the highest in the country but still hard to live on in many parts of the state. It could take a decade or more for teachers to pay off their loans.

    Muratsuchi’s bill, AB 1128, passed the Assembly on Monday and now awaits a vote in the Senate. It would create a grant program for districts to pay student teachers the same amount they pay substitute teachers, which is roughly $140 a day. The overall cost would be up to $300 million a year, according to Assembly analysts, but Gov. Gavin Newsom has set aside $100 million for the program in his revised budget.

    Muratsuchi has another bill related to teacher pay, also working its way through the Legislature. Assembly bill 477, which passed the Assembly this week, would raise teacher salaries across the board.

    Paying teachers, saving money

    Christopher Carr, executive director of Aspire Public Schools in Los Angeles, a network of 11 charter schools, called the bill a potential “game changer.”

    Teacher candidates often have to work second jobs to make ends meet, and sometimes finish with debt of $70,000 or more, he said. That can be an insurmountable barrier for people with limited resources. Paying would-be teachers would attract more people to the teaching profession, especially Black and Latino candidates, he said.

    School districts around the state have been trying to diversify their teacher workforces, based on research showing that Black and Latino students tend to do better academically when they have at least one teacher of the same race.

    Carr’s schools pay their teachers-in-training through grants and a partnership with a local college, which has led to more of them staying on to teach full time after they receive their credentials, he said. That has saved the schools money by reducing turnover.

    “This could open doors and be a step toward racial justice,” Carr said. “California has a million spending priorities, but this will lead to better outcomes for students and ultimately save the state money.”

    Tyanthony Davis, chief executive director of Inner City Education Foundation, a charter school network in Los Angeles, put it this way: “If we have well paid, qualified, happy teachers, we’ll have happier classrooms.”

    No opposition, yet

    Muratusuchi’s bill has no formal opposition. The California Taxpayers Association has not taken a position. The California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, is a supporter.

    “This legislation comes at a critical time as we continue to face an educator recruitment and retention crisis,” said David Goldberg, the union president. “Providing new grants to compensate student teachers for important on-the-job training is a strong step forward in the right direction to strengthening public education.”

    Hunter survived her student-teaching experience and went on to teach fourth grade for 34 years, retiring last year from the Mark West Union School District in Santa Rosa. The last 15 years of her career she served as a mentor to aspiring teachers. She saw first-hand the stress that would-be teachers endure as they juggle coursework, long days in the classroom and often second jobs on nights and weekends.

    But paying student-teachers, she said, should only be the beginning. Novice teachers also need  smaller class sizes, more support from administrators and more help with enrichment activities, such as extra staff to lead lessons in art and physical education.

    “We definitely need more teachers, and paying student teachers is a good start,” Hunter said. “But there’s a lot more we can do to help them.”

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • What the Employment Rights Bill means for higher education

    What the Employment Rights Bill means for higher education

    The Employment Rights Bill received its third and final reading in the House of Commons in April and is due to complete its committee stage in the House of Lords next month.

     Following extensive amendments in the Commons, the current version of the Bill (at over 300 pages) is nearly twice as long as the original version published a year ago.

    Although the Bill is likely to be added to the statute book in the next few months, most of the measures will not be commenced until 2026 at the earliest.

    Unfair dismissal

    The Bill abolishes the two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal but introduces a new framework for a lighter touch unfair dismissal regime during an “initial period of employment”. In previous government statements, this has been described as an exception for probationary periods, though it may turn out to be wider than that.

    It means that employees must have started work to benefit from the day one right. Existing provisions on automatically unfair dismissals will be retained and will continue to apply from the point the employment relationship starts.

    To come within this more relaxed regime during the initial period of employment, an employer will need to demonstrate a potentially fair reason for dismissal which relates to the individual employee. This means that dismissals on redundancy grounds during the initial period of employment will not fall within these new rules.

    Yet to be made regulations will define the length of the initial period of employment and how it is calculated. This is understood to be a minimum of six months and could be as long as a year: currently, the government supports a compromise of nine months. Regulations may also specify that a dismissal will be regarded as fair if certain procedural steps have been followed. These might include, for example, holding a meeting with the employee before reaching a decision to dismiss and confirming the reasons for the decision in writing.

    On the face of it, protecting all employees from unfair dismissal from day one will have a broadly equal impact on all employers. However, complex organisations like universities will need to invest more time reviewing their existing procedures than most other businesses. If they want to take advantage of the new “light touch” unfair dismissal regime, they will need to align their procedures on probationary periods with the new statutory framework. Again, this may not be straightforward, particularly for academic staff.

    Zero hours contracts

    Universities have taken a lot of criticism for using zero hours contracts in certain circumstances. As of 2023–24 there are around 4,000 academics on a zero hour contract. Although we don’t have the data, it is likely that the numbers are higher for other staff.

    As it stands there are three groups of measures to protect zero-hours workers:

    1. The right to guaranteed hours after the end of every reference period, which reflects the hours worked during that period;
    2. The right to reasonable notice of shifts (including change and cancellation); and
    3. The right to payment for cancelled, moved and curtailed shifts where sufficient notice has not been given

    Similar rights will be extended to agency workers via a new schedule, which was inserted in the Bill at report stage in the House of Commons. The government introduced provisions at this stage which would make it possible for employers and workers to modify the application of these provisions via a collective agreement.

    Regulations will define the reference period for guaranteed hours and other conditions of entitlement, as well as the procedural requirements around the offer of a new contract. They will also specify the minimum notice period for the cancellation of shifts, the compensation due and when it must be paid.

    According to the Bill’s impact assessment, the education sector as a whole has a higher-than-average user of variable hours contracts, an assessment that reflects our experience advising higher education clients. What may raise eyebrows in the sector is the potential for significant direct and indirect costs in complying with these measures, which are among the most complex in the Bill. They will need to wait for the regulations before making detailed plans, but at this stage, providers should establish which workers and agency staff are likely to be covered by these provisions.

    It would also be worth exploring the possibility of entering into a collective agreement to create tailor-made arrangements to protect variable hours workers in place of the statutory regime. However, with a caution that we are still awaiting details of any restrictions on “contracting out” in this way.

    The use of fixed-term contracts with fixed hours is not targeted by these measures, although there may be some anti-avoidance measures to prevent abuse. This is encouraging news for higher education institutions, which had been concerned about measures in the Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act 2023. This Act will no longer be brought into effect.

    Collective redundancies

    You don’t have to have read much about higher education recently to be aware that the majority of universities now have some kind of redundancy scheme in place. There are three interlocking groups of measures in the Bill concerning collective redundancies.

    The rules on the numerical threshold that triggers the collective consultation requirements will be changed by introducing a new rule for multiple site redundancies. Though the threshold for single-site redundancies will stay at twenty, an alternative method of calculation will be applied when the workers involved are spread across different sites – once again, the details will be set out in regulations still to be published.

    It will become automatically unfair to dismiss an employee for not agreeing to a variation to their contract, or if the employer dismisses the employee to replace or to re-engage them on varied contractual terms (so called “fire and rehire”, something which some universities have been called out for).

    However, there is an exception to these rules if the employer can show the reason for the variation was to “eliminate, prevent, significantly reduce or significantly mitigate the effects of financial difficulties which, at the time of the dismissal, were affecting the employer’s ability to carry on the business as a going concern” and could not reasonably have avoided the need to make the variation.

    While this new rule also applies to one-off dismissals, it is most likely to be engaged where an employer is seeking to restructure, where the obligation to consult collectively will usually apply too.

    These new rules create a new category of “automatically unfair” dismissal – ie an unfair dismissal claim to which the employer will have no defence – will make it very difficult for employers to restructure without paying the employees involved significant compensation.

    This is because the defence that dismissal was to mitigate “financial difficulties” is so narrowly drawn. We had been expecting amendments to this provision to be put forward in the House of Lords, but there is no sign of these so far.

    The maximum period covered by a protective award for breach of collective consultation requirements will be increased from 90 to 180 days. However, proposals to introduce a new right to claim interim relief where they have been breached have been dropped.

    Fire and rehire

    As highly unionised organisations, universities will be acutely aware of the increased penalties for failing to comply with collective redundancy consultation. Consequently, breaches of these requirements are rare in the sector. To maintain this record employers will need to quickly get across the new rules.

    Likewise, fire-and-rehire is rare (though reports are growing), but universities should be aware that the Bill’s provisions to target this practice could also be engaged when negotiating with their unions about changes to terms and conditions, if dismissal and re-engagement are being considered as a last resort.

    There are other measures in the Bill relating to trade unions and industrial action, which are outside the scope of this article. These include the repeal of almost all of the last government’s trade union legislation, which is likely to take effect later this year. There is an overview of these measures in our briefing here.

    The combination of good HR practices and very vocal union opposition to any breaches means that higher education providers, while far from perfect, are pretty good employers overall.

    The Bill is targeted elsewhere, but with the rules changing (and likely to continue changing with subsequent legislations), employment rights compliance cannot be taken as a given and universities will need to make active efforts to stay up to date.

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  • The reconciliation bill cleared the House. Here’s how it would change higher ed.

    The reconciliation bill cleared the House. Here’s how it would change higher ed.

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    House Republicans on Thursday narrowly passed a massive tax and spending bill that, if signed into law, would add new financial pressures on U.S. colleges and students while extending the tax cuts instituted in 2017. 

    Backed by President Donald Trump and dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the proposal includes provisions for dramatically increasing the endowment tax, a risk-sharing policy that would put colleges on the hook for unpaid student loans, and changes to the federal student aid program that critics say would reduce access to higher education. 

    It also includes work requirements to the Medicaid health insurance program, changes to which could impact university hospitals and leave many college students without health insurance.

    The bill is headed to the Senate after it passed the House by one vote, with every Democrat and two Republicans voting against it. Three other Republicans either abstained or did not participate in the vote. 

    The Senate, held by Republicans with a 53-person majority, is widely expected to add changes to the bill.

    Since lawmakers passed the legislation as part of the reconciliation process — a rule allowing the Senate to approve spending-related policies with a simple majority — Republicans can avoid a filibuster that would take 60 votes to break.  

    In a Wednesday letter to House leaders, American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell wrote that the higher ed policy changes would have “a historic and negative impact on the ability of current and future students to access postsecondary education, as well as on colleges and universities striving to carry out their vital educational and research missions.”

    Here is a look at some of the major higher ed provisions:

    Endowment tax

    Today, the richest private colleges — the few dozen with at least 500 students and at least $500,000 endowment assets per student — pay an endowment excise tax set at 1.4%.

    Wednesday’s bill would implement a graduated rate structure, with levels starting at 1.4%, and rising to 7%, 14% and 21% depending on endowment assets per student. Under that tiered system, the wealthiest college would be taxed the same as the current corporate income rate. 

    When House Republicans advanced the endowment tax proposal earlier this month, they decried “woke, elite universities that operate more like major corporations.”

    The lowest tax bracket targets colleges whose endowments are valued between $500,000 and $749,999 per student.

    Endowment taxes would rise to 21% for the nation’s wealthiest private colleges

    Excise tax tiers for private colleges based on endowment funds per student

    Industry experts and insiders worry the tax could hurt colleges’ long-term missions and diminish the resources they rely on to recruit lower-income students. 

    In a statement Thursday, Kara Freeman, president and CEO of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, pointed to research by her organization and Commonfund finding that nearly half of endowment spending went toward student aid in fiscal 2024. 

    “This scholarship tax takes funds away from students and makes it less possible for colleges to support them,” Freeman said. 

    Colleges spend the largest share of endowment funds on student financial aid

    Endowment spending distribution by function in fiscal 2024

    Financial aid changes

    The bill eliminates federal subsidized loans for undergraduates and Direct Plus loans for graduate students beginning on July 1, 2026.

    It also limits Parent Plus Loans, capping how much parents can borrow and only allowing them to take out loans if their dependent student has already taken out the maximum in unsubsidized loans. 

    The bill sets an overall lifetime student loan limit of $200,000 for any single borrower across all federal loan types.

    Additionally, it raises the course hours for the full-time student designation needed to receive the maximum Pell Grant from 24 to 30 per academic year, and it changes the formula for Pell eligibility.

    ACE’s Mitchell called the proposed changes to Pell Grants “crippling,” saying some 700,000 students could lose eligibility under the bill. 

    Regarding changes to federal student funding writ large, Mitchell described them as “deep cuts and damaging changes to important federal student aid programs” that would limit access to education. 

    The bill also cuts several student loan repayment programs, consolidating a “litany” of repayment plans into two, according to the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

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  • One Big, Ugly, & Deadly Bill (Reverand William Barber)

    One Big, Ugly, & Deadly Bill (Reverand William Barber)

    This morning I joined Amy Goodman on Democracy Now to talk about the bill that House Republican leadership worked through the night to push toward a vote on the floor.

    The more Americans learn about what’s in this bill, the more outrage there will be that House members are willing to vote for cuts that will devastate communities so their billionaire donors can have a massive tax break. (That’s why they’re meeting to talk about the details in the middle of the night.)

    We must sharpen our language to make clear what’s at stake in this one big, ugly, and death-dealing bill.

    And we must prepare ourselves for moral action.

    We are glad to announce that Indivisible, the national organization behind “No Kings Day” on June 14th, has joined our Moral Monday partners to mobilize a mass action on June 2 outside of the US Capitol. We invite you to register here if you can join us for Moral Monday on June 2.

    To learn more, plan to join me and Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin for a Substack Live on Tuesday, May 27, at 12pm ET.

    I’m also looking forward to a conversation here on Substack next week with Robert Reich. We will be live Wednesday, May 28, at 5:30pm ET/2:30pm PT.

    To join live conversations with us on Our Moral Moment, you just need to download the Substack app, subscribe for free, and turn out notifications. You’ll get a notice on your phone that we are going live.

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  • This week in 5 numbers: Sweeping higher ed bill advances

    This week in 5 numbers: Sweeping higher ed bill advances

    The federal funding that the Trump administration suspended to University of Pennsylvania in March, citing the Ivy League institution’s participation policies for transgender athletes. The U.S. Department of Education concluded this week Penn violated Title IX, though university leaders have said the institution is complying with current law and NCAA policies.

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  • Indiana Budget Bill Contains Sweeping Higher Ed Changes

    Indiana Budget Bill Contains Sweeping Higher Ed Changes

    Indiana state lawmakers have sent their governor a state budget bill that goes beyond setting funding levels. If Republican governor Mike Braun signs it into law, House Enrolled Act 1001 will require faculty at public colleges and universities to post their syllabi online and undergo “productivity” reviews.

    The bill would also—among other things—prohibit faculty emeriti from voting in faculty governance organizations, place low-enrolled degree programs at risk of elimination by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and end alumni elections for three Indiana University Board of Trustees seats by filling them with gubernatorial appointees. In addition, it has a provision that would let Braun remove the currently elected board members before their terms expire.

    “I think overreach doesn’t begin to describe the actions of the Legislature,” said Russ Skiba, a professor emeritus of education at IU Bloomington. “This is really a sweeping takeover of higher education in Indiana.”

    The Republican-controlled Indiana General Assembly passed the legislation—which runs more than 200 pages—less than two days after revealing it Wednesday, April 23. The state House approved it around 12:45 a.m. Friday, followed by the Senate’s agreement at about 1:20 a.m.

    “I know a lot of legislators … simply didn’t have enough time to fully read it,” Skiba said. “There was no opportunity whatsoever for any sort of public input.”

    Matt Pierce, a Democratic Indiana House member who’s a senior lecturer at IU Bloomington, said the conference committee report revealing the budget bill wasn’t even released until Wednesday evening.

    “As people began to kind of go through it, they discovered all these higher education provisions that had never been discussed anywhere,” Pierce said. To have “provisions of this magnitude” pass in the budget bill “with no hearing or public input, that was pretty shocking,” he said.

    The budget bill’s higher education provisions echo those passed, or at least proposed, in other red states. But Indiana’s General Assembly continues to be in the vanguard among even GOP-controlled legislatures in its fervor for regulating public higher education. Last year, state lawmakers passed, and the former governor signed, a law threatening the jobs of nontenured and tenured faculty who don’t sufficiently foster “intellectual diversity,” as defined by campus boards of trustees.

    These bills follow pro-Palestine protests at IU Bloomington and tensions between faculty and university president Pamela Whitten. And with a further reduction of tenure protections looming in the new bill, a tenured professor at IU Bloomington says he’s under investigation for allegedly violating a policy the university wrote to uphold last year’s intellectual diversity law.

    Ben Robinson, an associate professor of Germanic studies and a prominent pro-Palestine campus protester, told Inside Higher Ed that an anonymous student filed a complaint against him in October. The unnamed student, according to a copy of the complaint Robinson provided, wrote that Robinson “talks negatively about the state of Israel and describes the war in untrue and unfair ways” and has discussed being arrested at a pro-Palestine rally “on numerous occasions.” The student also complained that Robinson had spoken “against Indiana University on several occasions” and used class time to say the university was restricting free speech.

    This complaint was filed in IU’s bias incident reporting system, which wouldn’t have involved potential discipline, Robinson said, but university administrators appeared to refile it as an intellectual diversity–related complaint under the policy passed after the General Assembly’s intellectual diversity law. He said he thinks administrators “want to overcomply on particularly this ideological issue, because that’s what they’re being told they have to enforce” by the federal government.

    “How can a professor know what’s going to be called bias?” Robinson said. He also said IU Bloomington is “a campus in which the witch hunts are alive and well, and I, along with many others, have been an open target of them.”

    IU spokesperson Mark Bode, in response to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for an interview and written questions about Robinson’s situation, wrote in an email simply that “IU does not comment on personnel matters.”

    Accusations of IU Involvement

    Multiple critics have accused IU leaders of backing one or more of the 11th-hour budget bill’s higher education changes. When asked about this, Bode provided a written statement that didn’t say whether IU was specifically involved.

    “Throughout the session, Indiana University engaged with state lawmakers to shape meaningful conversations about the university’s commitments to making higher education accessible to Hoosiers and driving the state’s economy through life-changing research and innovation,” the statement said. IU “will be working over the coming weeks to understand the full impact of state legislation and ensure compliance.”

    Before the bill passed, Pierce said, he texted an IU lobbyist asking the university’s position on it. The lobbyist replied that the institution didn’t have a position because it was still carefully reviewing the legislation, Pierce said.

    “And right then and there I knew that IU was behind it,” Pierce said. He also questioned how lawmakers would have the “pretty esoteric” knowledge that emeritus faculty serve in some faculty governance organizations.

    “You now have a convergence of the Republican attacks on higher education and the actual administration of Indiana University, and that’s a pretty shocking development,” he said.

    The IU Board of Trustees currently has six gubernatorial appointees—including a student with a two-year term—plus three members elected by alumni. If Braun signs the budget bill, he and future governors will be able to appoint all nine members, the student member’s term will drop to one year and there will be no more alumni-elected members.

    Braun has expressed support for this change, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

    “I think it’s being done because the current process [has] not maybe yielded the proper results on the entirety of how you want that important part of our state to be run—from curriculum to cost to the whole way one of our flagship universities has been operating,” Braun said, according to the Capital Chronicle. “I want to get a board there that is going to be a little more rounded, that’s going to produce better results.”

    Vivian Winston, one of the elected board members, who previously announced she’s not seeking re-election, said she voted against IU president Whitten’s contract extension and the university’s post-encampment protest restrictions. But she said she doesn’t know whether her votes were related to the board change part of the legislation—which, like the other higher ed provisions in the bill, caught her “unaware.”

    “I found out through the media,” Winston said of the changes in the bill.

    Rodric Bray, a Republican and Indiana’s Senate president pro tem, provided Inside Higher Ed a rationale for the part of the bill ending alumni elections.

    “A very small fraction of the IU alumni have been participating in the election for the alumni seats on the IU Board of Trustees,” Bray said in an emailed statement. “Of the approximately 790,000 alumni around the world, only about 2.5% of alumni voted in the most recent election for trustee. Because the number is so small, it is not a fair representation.”

    But some opponents of the provision don’t see it that way. Skiba, the IU Bloomington emeritus faculty member, said, “This is clearly payback for opposition of policies favored by the president of the university and the Legislature.” He said the change would “take those voices of opposition off the Board of Trustees and essentially give complete control of the Board of Trustees over to the governor.”

    Over all, Skiba said, “this Legislature is following the Trump lead—wishing to put an airtight lid on free expression. And if you’re wishing to do that, universities are an obvious place to start.”

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  • Renters’ Rights Bill – The Devil’s in the Detail

    Renters’ Rights Bill – The Devil’s in the Detail

    • By Martin Blakey, the former Chief Executive of the student housing charity Unipol and a member of the British Property Federation’s Student Accommodation Committee.

    HEPI has maintained, as one would expect, a serious interest in student housing and the impact this Bill will have on students. The last update was given on 3 February 2025, and since then, there have been significant developments. On that basis, this update covers three areas:

    1. Work has finally commenced on how purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) will transition from the current assured student tenancy regime into common law tenancies, as those tenancies are largely outside the provisions of the Act;
    2. The Renters’ Rights Bill (RRB) is now at the Lords Committee Stage, and on 22 April 2025, around half the day was taken up discussing student-related housing, giving a clear indication of the Government’s thinking on the outcome of the Bill and student housing; and
    3. The Government-approved Unipol/ANUK National Code has undergone significant revision and is now out for public consultation before its final text is agreed.

    Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA)

    Long overdue work is now taking place by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to establish the mechanism whereby PBSA providers will become ‘specified’ under the Housing Act (1988). This will put them outside the remit of much of the Renters’ Rights legislation.

    As part of the earlier discussions on this with the British Property Federation (and their Student Accommodation Committee), MHCLG had previously advised that existing tenancies would automatically become common law tenancies. However, on 1 April, Unipol was informed that there were problems with this and that Assured Shorthold Tenancies (ASTs) existing before the implementation of the Act will now transition to be assured tenancies that will fall under the remit of the Act.

    This may seem a rather nerdy legal change with little impact, but it would be a mistake to conclude that.

    The timescale of the Bill has self-evidently slipped from the initial aim of obtaining Royal Assent by Easter 2025, and the Government is racing to ensure that it passes through all its parliamentary stages by the summer recess on July 22, 2025. Some aspects of the Act will be subject to further detailed consultation, but the main tenure reforms will be implemented quickly. This rush to get the Bill through its parliamentary stages may explain the evident ‘make do and mend’ approach to the transition of PBSA tenancies. This rush certainly explains the Government’s unwillingness to accept any non-Government amendments in both the Commons and the Lords.

    Because PBSA tenancies will now transition into assured tenancies, the timing of implementation is important because it will determine the extent to which the PBSA market will be disrupted by this change of position. It is reasonable to conclude that tenure changes are likely to occur around December 2025 or January 2026. Since most students living in PBSA will have already signed contracts for the 2025–26 academic year, around 402,000 students are expected to be affected, based on the Unipol/NUS Accommodation Cost Survey 2021. Only bed spaces provided directly by universities will fall outside of these transitional arrangements.

    So, what are those arrangements?

    Previous AST tenants, as they become assured tenants, will:

    • Be able to pay rent monthly, and longer payment periods will be unenforceable. It is not yet clear whether rent already paid in advance will have to be refunded.
    • Be able to give two months’ notice and then leave their contracts.
    • Be able to remain in their property because the fixed-term nature of their previous contract has been abolished.

    So how will PBSA providers be able to guarantee room availability for the start of 2026-27?

    For those students living in houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), MHCLG say that providers will be able to give notice under the new repossession ground 4a for students. This will allow repossession to take place between June and September, thus ensuring those rooms are available for new student tenants. But here, the new system is not clear because, as Baroness Taylor Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said in the Lords on 22 April 2025:

    The core aim of the Bill is to enhance the security of tenants in the private rented sector, including students. The prior notice requirement in ground 4A is key to this. If tenants are liable to be evicted through no fault of their own simply because of their student status, they must be informed of this reduced security before entering into a tenancy.

    And in the case of PBSA tenants, this notice will not have been given. MHCLG say that legislative changes will be made to allow for such a notice to be given within 28 days of the implementation of the Act but, so far, there is no sign of how that will be achieved, nor was it referenced in the Lords Committee debate.

    But ground 4a only applies to HMOs (roughly defined as a dwelling housing three or more students). PBSA has very few two-bed flats, but it does have 78,000 studio flats that will fall outside of ground 4a. In these cases, students can stay as long as they wish, provided they give two months’ notice of when they want to leave.

    Many of those involved at the coal-face in student accommodation will know that each year there are many requests (particularly from international postgraduates who make up the majority of the market for studios) to extend their contracts from September to just before Christmas (the reasons are various, ranging from over-running dissertation time to wanting to attend the pre-Christmas degree ceremonies). These students have to be moved on in order to make way for incoming new students – now they will be able to stay.  So, in the case of studios, PBSA suppliers will not be able to guarantee room availability to incoming students until the outgoing students have served notice (and they may ‘forget’ to do this anyway).

    If PBSA studio tenants decide to stay on for a further year (as some do as they move from masters to research degrees), then their transitional assured tenancy status will stay with them until they choose to leave.

    This added flexibility may sound great for current students, but it is very bad news for the cost and availability of accommodation for future students, particularly those looking for housing in 2026-27.

    For PBSA providers, this transitional phase is an administrative and legal nightmare; they

    • will have to re-tool their rent collection systems;
    • change their legal documentation;
    • serve specified notice to gain repossession;
    • deal with student tenants who can come and go as they wish; and
    • absorb the possibility of additional voids if students choose to leave their accommodation mid-year

    And there are other implications:

    • Students remaining in their accommodation when they are no longer students will cause many providers to be in breach of their planning permissions, which stipulate student-only occupation;
    • The Act does not allow landlords to discriminate against tenants who may have children, but it is generally accepted that PBSA studios are not a suitable environment to house children (and housing children may place the landlord in breach of any licensing conditions imposed by the local authority).

    Politicians may say ‘So what?’; this is only a transitional phase. But it is important to remember that in private sector housing, the tenant pays for everything, and so these added (and unnecessary) costs are likely to be reflected in future supply uncertainty and higher rent levels.

    Furthermore, this ‘transitional phase’ goes directly against what the Government said was going to happen when Matthew Pennycook, the Minister for Housing and Planning, said to parliament (on 19 December 2024):

    The Bill will exempt Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) from the assured tenancy system if the landlord is signed up to a government approved code of management practice.

    No mention of a disastrous ‘transitional phase’. The shifting goalposts approach of MHCLG has significantly eroded trust among housing providers in the Government’s ability to manage the transition of PBSA to common law tenancies without further problems emerging.

    Does it have to be like this?

    Well no. Firstly, the Government could seek to mitigate the effect of the transitional phase by having a time-limited new repossession ground (say 4b) which would allow repossession for students living in PBSA studios in line with existing Ground 4a. That would, at least, maintain the academic cycle on the availability of accommodation – but perhaps they are in too much of a rush to get the Bill approved to consider this.

    Secondly, the Government could seek to mitigate how many students were affected by these transitional arrangements by using powers the Secretary of State already has (under Section 8 of the Rent Act 1977 and paragraph 8 of Schedule 1 to the Housing Act 1988) to give specified status now to PBSA providers, ahead of the RRA implementation. Using those existing powers the wording in an SI could be:

    The following bodies of persons (whether unincorporated or bodies corporate) are hereby specified as bodies for the purposes of paragraph 8 of Schedule 1 to the Housing Act 1988, that is to say –

    any person managing or having control of purpose-built student accommodation if the accommodation let or to be let is registered with a code of practice which has been approved by the appropriate national authority under powers conferred by section 233 of the Housing Act 2004.

    This would mean that as soon as that Statutory Instrument was approved (and that could be done by the end of May 2025), tenancies issued after that would then be common law tenancies and this would drastically reduce the number of tenancies in any transitional stage.

    In the Lords, Baroness Taylor said the reason that Ministers were seeking additional powers to create specified status (in clause 34 of the Bill) instead of using powers they already had was:

    Although there is an existing power in the Housing Act 1988 to exempt PBSA landlords, it would have required government to frequently update secondary legislation with a list of landlords, causing a duplication of work between code administrators and officials and a lag in the link between code membership and exemption status.

    Even if this were true (there is no reason why the list of ‘landlords’ needs to be individually specified), this supposed ‘duplication of work’ over the transitional period would require a great deal less work to be done than that being caused by the Government’s currently disruptive and onerous proposals.

    Why has this ‘transition problem’ appeared now? 

    It may be unkind to conclude that after three year’s discussion with Unipol (who run the relevant Government-approved Code and the BPF) that real work by MHCLG has only just started on their own proposal and there are issues to be resolved. Even following the Minister’s statement that new powers will be granted under Clause 34 of the Housing Act, where are those new powers? There is, as yet, no evidence of any drafting of the new Statutory Instrument/s now that those are apparently needed.

    This ‘dog’s dinner’ rushed approach to the PBSA transition period has still to play out fully, and more detailed work is still required to achieve implementation.

    The Lords Committee Stage

    There was considerable discussion about students on 22 April 2025 in the Lords and it is worth highlighting some of the points made because they provide a clear indication of how the Government is thinking about student housing. As Baroness Taylor said in this debate:

    The Government made a clear manifesto commitment to transform the experience of private renting by levelling the playing field decisively between landlords and tenants…One of the reasons the Government do not want to reintroduce fixed terms or anything like them is that they add complexity into the system. Having a simple, single system of periodic tenancies will make it easier for both parties to better understand their rights and responsibilities.

    All the discussion on this Bill has been polarised into a landlord v tenant framework. This approach does not work well in addressing issues within student housing, where a third educational aspect is also relevant: the availability of good-quality housing at the right time of year, allowing students to undertake their studies in the most productive way.

    Security of tenure (the central pillar of the Bill) has only limited value to a very small minority of students and this has been recognised by what might be called ‘intermediary sector bodies’ such as UUK, CUBO, ASRA and Unipol – none of which easily fall into the Bill’s landlord v tenant framework.

    Lord Willetts, in proposing what would have been a useful amendment, eloquently summed up what has happened to student housing during discussions on the Bill:

     I understand the arguments that the Minister makes about the need for tenants to have security and be able to put down roots in the long term, but so many of her arguments for this legislation do not apply to students who are seeking reliable accommodation for an academic year. The model that she proposes is clearly not in their interests.

    The Government have clearly accepted that there is a need for some special arrangements for student lets…The Government have made some concessions to recognise the student market. There is already one exemption from the legislation, which is for purpose-built student accommodation.

    There is now a second category that has been added, and that is ground 4A, which is essentially for HMOs with three bedrooms or more in the private rented sector.

    But that leaves a third group for whom the Government are not currently providing any exemption. These are students in smaller accommodation, maybe one or two-bedroom properties, for whom none of the special exemptions are going to apply. It is therefore very odd that, in the Government’s model to tackle this problem, you could have three university students who are friends and are in three totally different rental regimes because of the structure of the exemptions which the Government are trying to offer.

    Lord Willetts’ analysis reflects how, initially, the previous Government Bill failed to take much account of the housing needs of students and how pressure from the sector had caused some of those special needs to be recognised and accounted for in a rather grudging and piecemeal fashion.

    In rejecting the amendment (which was supported by Lords from all the major parties), Baroness Taylor, on behalf of the Government said:

    We have thought very carefully about the design of ground 4A. Limiting it to HMOs captures the bulk of typical students—that is, groups living in a house share. Meanwhile, students who need more security of tenure, such as single parents living with their children, postgraduate couples living together who have put down roots in an area, or families containing students, will be protected.

    The core principle of the Bill is that tenants should have more security in their homes, and we think it is right that these groups should not be exposed to potential eviction using ground 4A. Self-contained one-bedroom and two-bedroom homes are also easier to let to non-students than student HMOs are, so, if a landlord cannot gain possession in line with the academic year and the tenants leave in the middle of the next one, the landlord is highly likely to be able to let the property out to non-student tenants…

    What this says indirectly is that the Government accepts that between 25% and 32% (estimates vary) of off-street student housing could be lost by being occupied by non-students, as landlords let properties when they become vacant rather than fitting into the academic cycle. This loss of 138,000 beds (taking the lower estimate) will hit different University towns and cities differently, depending on their housing stock and is likely to take place over the next few years. As an earlier HEPI blog said back in June 2024,

    The concern in student housing was not only about overall supply but the specific reduction of student housing supply because, if students were no different to any other tenant group and could come and go as they pleased, then why would landlords rent to students and incur void periods, when they could rent to other rental groups without having empty rooms in the context of rising overall demand for renting?

    There has been no suggestion of how this lost stock could be replaced – certainly not by newly developed higher cost PBSA bed spaces which has seen net growth of only around 48,000 beds over the last three years and few of these would have been affordable and appropriate for students looking to share with a friend or partner in a lower rental bracket.

    In reality, the Government has not really accepted the sector view that students are a special group and should be catered for separately. The calls for a specialist student tenancy regime have been firmly rejected. As Baroness Taylor made clear:

    It would not be either right or fair for students to have less flexibility than other tenants just because of their educational status.

    As my HEPI blog said back in October 2024:

    It could be that the big gainers from this tenure reform are longer-term family renters and professional renters and that the poorest and most vulnerable in society together with student renters could become ‘collateral damage’. These reforms are well-intentioned by those who campaigned for them, but that does not mean all tenants will be winners from these changes.

    The discussion in the Lords has now confirmed that this collateral damage for students is part of the design within the Bill. Landlords renting non-HMO properties can be reassured about their rent by simply switching their lettings to non-students – tough luck on the students, as their housing supply contracts.

    The revised Unipol/ANUK National Code

    My previous blog on 3 February 2025 outlined possible changes to the private providers’ Code and those have now been worked up into a revised Code. Briefly, these changes are:

    • The continued protection of deposits using a Government-approved deposit protection scheme;
    • Improving the flexibility for students either leaving their institution of study or not gaining a place to study, giving them the right to leave their agreement with a notice period of 4 weeks;
    • That in the event of the death of a tenant, any guarantor agreement would not be proceeded with or enforced;
    • The Code now references the Building Safety Act, the Fire Safety Act and tighter guidance on how to respond to damp and mould; and
    • In handling complaints, timescales have been tightened, and Code Members have been given a clearer pathway to ensure they respond promptly to students complaining.

    Only one significant addition has been made to the revised Code and that follows the Education Minister, Janet Daly MP clarifying the positon of students withdrawing for medical reasons from their studies and the proposed four week notice period has been extended to cover ‘if the occupant has been absent from their course for more than 60 days due to illness and has agreed with their higher education (HE) provider to suspend their studies.‘

    These proposals are subject to both a sector and public consultation period which is taking place across 9th April – 22nd May 2025. Details can be found online here and those interested are encouraged to respond.

    The changes to the Code are designed to protect and improve students’ rights in renting PBSA but, because of the uncertainty caused by the ‘transitional arrangements’ for PBSA providers, they are going into a sector that is now increasingly hostile to the Government’s approach to them and the additional administrative and legal burdens connected with assured tenancy status that have suddenly appeared. It could well be that some responses to these Code changes will be affected by a ‘feel-bad’ factor and may be opposed by some Members.

    Just two observations on the consultation. Firstly, the Code has been drafted so that the additional flexibility given to tenants to give notice on their agreement is restricted to common law tenancies, so these will not apply to transitional assured tenancies (so no ‘double-whammy’) and secondly, it is important for the PBSA sector to look beyond the immediate transitional mess and concentrate on the longer term purpose of the Code which has been a force for good, not just for student housing rights and standards, but for the sector itself, giving the student market a set of recognised value-based rules that is rarely seen in private sector renting. This demonstrates real recognition from the Code’s Members (since the Code’s inception in 2004) that students and the role of housing in education are special and need a bespoke regulatory framework.

    Conclusion

    As reflected throughout HEPI’s work, this blog approaches the issue of student housing as an educational issue and seeks to provide evidence-based observations on the student housing sector. It also seeks to offer some practical suggestions so that the possible cost and chaos in the transitional phase of the Act can be mitigated, particularly for PBSA providers.

    There are still discussions to be held with MHCLG and practical issues to be resolved on how future Statutory Instruments and specified status is to be achieved. So far, although the Government say they are in ‘listening mode’ they seem not to have heard terribly well and the way in which students have been ‘accommodated’ within the Bill has been both secretive and unpredictable. It would be good if a more open relationship on future proposals could be established.

    Finally, this is the first mention of the Department for Education in this blog because they appear to have had no discernible influence or input into a Bill that will both disrupt the student housing market and see some significant reduction in supply. Going back to 24 October, Education Minister Janet Daby MP stressed that the Department for Education was:

    ‘Working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to promote the importance of a strategic approach to meeting student housing needs to providers and local authorities.

    Going forward, it would be good to see some, or any, evidence of that.

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  • Department of Veterans Affairs Delays Answering Questions on GI Bill Complaints

    Department of Veterans Affairs Delays Answering Questions on GI Bill Complaints







    Higher Education Inquirer : Department of Veterans Affairs Delays Answering Questions on GI Bill Complaints




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  • Thankfully, Larry David mocks Bill Maher – First Amendment News 467

    Thankfully, Larry David mocks Bill Maher – First Amendment News 467

    “Look, I get it. It doesn’t matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian. It matters who he is on the world stage. I’m just taking it as a positive that this person exists.” – Bill Maher, recounting his dinner with President Trump, HBO

    “I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.” – Larry David, “My Dinner with Adolf,” The New York Times

    By and large, I have long appreciated Bill Maher’s “Real Time” comic stings. Just the sort of thing that social comedy should do. In 2002, we shared a stage as recipients of a Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award. It was an honor, even though I found him rather full of himself.

    That said, after watching my fill of Rachel Maddow and others, I take escapist pleasure in watching Bill slay any variety of righteous types with his comic axe. That is, until I watched the April 11 episode of “Real Time,” the one where he joked about his dinner at the White House with President Trump.

    While Maher did note Trump’s attacks on him, and his counter-attacks on Trump, he did so in a way that made Trump seem like little more than a nice guy with different views. Maher normalized the man who time and again has attacked First Amendment values with authoritarian abandon — the very values Maher champions.

    Ah, Bill’s dinner with Donald was so delightfully memorable: Donald was “gracious and measured.” And catch this: he’s no “crazy person,” said Maher, though he “plays a crazy person on TV.” Moreover, he’s “much more self-aware than he lets on.” He’s “just not as fucked up as I thought [he] was.” 

    Oh, the private Donald was so tolerant, so engaging, so rational, and so open to hearing the other side. Ya just got to get to know the guy, break bread with him, warts and all. Hell (and that’s the word), in person he is actually “measured,” even if he presents a real threat to constitutional democracy and a clear and present danger to almost every value of First Amendment law.

    The folks at “Fox And Friends” loved the Maher/Trump “Kumbaya” moment, though they did not buy Maher’s private/public distinction regarding Trump’s personality. Hardly. For them, what Maher portrayed was the real Trump: “What Bill Maher saw was what the American public as a whole has come to see. . . He’s not pretending to be something he isn’t. And that’s what stood out.” 

    All of it made me want to puke! 

    “You know,” I said to my wife Susan, “I wonder what he’d say if he met Hitler and found him to be ‘gracious.’”

    Cut to Tuesday morning: It’s early, and Susan says, “You gotta read this Larry David piece in the Times. It’s titled ‘My Dinner With Adolf.’ It tracks what Maher said about Trump while mocking Maher every inch of the way.” 

    Ok, match on! 

    Just as sometimes one must “fight fire with fire,” so too sometimes one must fight “comedy with comedy.” Enter Larry David. Here’s how his satiric response to Maher’s dinner with Trump opens:

    Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.

    Larry David at the induction ceremony for Mary Steenburgen into the Hollywood Walk of Fame

    Larry David at the induction ceremony for Mary Steenburgen into the  Hollywood Walk of Fame (Shutterstock.com)

    And here’s how David ends his deliciously jeering counter to Maher:

    Two hours later, the dinner was over, and the Führer escorted me to the door. “I am so glad to have met you. I hope I’m no longer the monster you thought I was.” “I must say, mein Führer, I’m so thankful I came. Although we disagree on many issues, it doesn’t mean that we have to hate each other.” And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night.

    Note to Bill: You gotta curb your enthusiasm for your “gracious” and “measured” friend. Tyranny isn’t funny, it’s evil!

    Hold on! Maher got worse when Banon arrived:

    Awful as his naïve Trump dinner fiasco was, I was nonetheless eager to hear Maher’s interview with Steve Bannon thereafter. When he wasn’t joking around, the good news was that Bill asked tough questions. The bad news was that, save for an opening exchange about Trump’s third-term aspirations, Maher really didn’t press Bannon every time he responded with an evasive answer. He just let it sit there and moved on to another tough question followed by more evasive answers . . . followed by “bro bonding.”

    Really Bill! What the fuck happened to your strong sting, bro? You were more like a soft butterfly.

    Remember:

    ‘60 Minutes’ producer quits over journalistic independence

    Bill Owens

    Bill Owens

    CBS News entered a new period of turmoil on Tuesday after the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, said that he would resign from the long-running Sunday news program, citing encroachments on his journalistic independence.

    In an extraordinary declaration, Mr. Owens — only the third person to run the program in its 57-year history — told his staff in a memo that “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

    “So, having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” he wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The New York Times.

    ‘60 Minutes’ has faced mounting pressure in recent months from both President Trump, who sued CBS for $10 billion and has accused the program of “unlawful and illegal behavior,” and its own corporate ownership at Paramount, the parent company of CBS News.

    Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison.”

    Comments offered to FAN by Floyd Abrams and Ira Glasser

    “It is deeply troubling that Bill Owens, whose leadership of ‘60 Minutes’ as its executive producer has been repeatedly honored through the years, has been obliged to resign because of pressure from the Trump Administration and ABC’s new corporate owner. It is a blow to independent journalism and a great loss to the American public.” — Floyd Abrams

    “Unless the Supreme Court radically changes First Amendment law, Trump’s suit has no legal merit.  If Paramount isn’t interested in defending CBS’ right to criticize public officials, it ought to sell CBS to someone who is, and stick to the entertainment business. What Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite constructed, Shari Redstone [executive chairwoman of Paramount Global] is tearing down.” — Ira Glasser

    Related

    Coming Next Wednesday

    Zick’s Resources Compilation of Executive Actions Affecting First Amendment Rights 

    Coming as soon as next Wednesday, Professor Stephen Solomon and his colleagues over at First Amendment Watch will launch Professor Timothy Zick’s invaluable Resources pages, replete with a comprehensive, topical, and hyperlinked set of references to virtually all of the Trump executive orders and related actions affecting free expression. This user-friendly and topic-specific resources page provides the most detailed and yet across-the-board account of what has happened within the last 100 days of this Administration in matters concerning the First Amendment.

    Jury rules against Palin in defamation against The New York Times

    The New York Times did not libel former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in a 2017 editorial that contained an error she claimed had damaged her reputation, a jury concluded Tuesday. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin campaigned for the state’s U.S. House seat in 2022 with the support of President Trump. She did not win.

    The jury deliberated a little over two hours before reaching its verdict. A judge and a different jury had reached the same conclusion about Palin’s defamation claims in 2022, but her lawsuit was revived by an appeals court.

    Palin was subdued as she left the courthouse and made her way to a waiting car, telling reporters: “I get to go home to a beautiful family of five kids and grandkids and a beautiful property and get on with life. And that’s nice.”

    FIRE fires back in Trump pollster fraud suit

    “This lawsuit is, as the Bard put it, a tale ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’”

    This case is built entirely on a tissue of shopworn campaign rhetoric and fever-dream conspiracy theories, yet even accepting Plaintiffs’ wild factual assertions as true, the Complaint lacks any plausible legal theory on which to grant relief. The allegations of “fraudulent news” are an affront to basic First Amendment law, and Plaintiffs continue to butcher elementary concepts like duty, reliance, causation, and damages under Iowa law. The Court should dismiss the Amended Complaint.

    Arguments

    1. Plaintiffs’ Claim That Election Polls and the News Coverage They Generate Can Be Labelled “Fraud” Unprotected by the First Amendment is Utterly Baseless.
    2. There is No General First Amendment Exception for False Speech.
    3. Election Polling is Not Commercial Speech and is Fully Protected Election News Coverage.
    4. No Case Law Supports Plaintiffs’ Theory of Liability.
    5. Plaintiffs’ Claims are Facially Deficient Under Iowa Law
    6. Plaintiffs Fail to Plead a Cognizable ICFA Claim.
    7. Plaintiffs Fail to Plead a Fraudulent Misrepresentation Claim.
    8. Plaintiffs Fail to Plead a Negligent Misrepresentation Claim.
    9. Piercing the Corporate Veil.

    Conclusion

    This lawsuit is, as the Bard put it, a tale “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5. Once you get past the groundless assertions, campaign-style hyperbole, and overheated conspiracy theories, there is nothing left. No legal basis whatsoever supports the claims, and Plaintiffs’ opposition to the motions to dismiss reveals both shocking unfamiliarity with basic concepts of First Amendment law and a disregard of the pleading requirements for fraud or misrepresentation under Iowa law. As one court summed it up in another of President Trump’s attacks on free speech: “This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.” Trump v. Clinton, 653 F.Supp.3d at 1207. The Court should dismiss this case with prejudice.

    Attorneys for Defendants J. Ann Selzer, and Selzer & Company: Robert Corn-Revere, Conor T. Fitzpatrick, Greg H. Greubel, and Matthew A. McGuire

    School district ordered to pay attorney fees to censored parent

    Bret Nolan of the Federalist Society

    Bret Nolan (Federalist Society)

    A federal judge has ordered that the Sheridan County (WY) School District must pay attorneys’ fees following a lawsuit with Harry Pollak, a parent censored during a 2022 school board meeting

    Following a lengthy legal dispute, the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming has awarded attorneys’ fees totaling $156,000 to the litigation team representing Harry Pollak of Sheridan County. Mr. Pollak was represented by Institute for Free Speech Senior Attorney Brett Nolan and local counsel Seth Johnson.

    Mr. Pollak initially filed suit against the Sheridan County School District in March 2022 after he was cut off from speaking from speaking critically about the superintendent at a school board meeting. The board cited a policy against discussing “personnel matters” as the reason for censoring him, and it called the police to escort him out of the building.

    Last fall, the district court ruled in favor of Mr. Pollak, declaring that the school board violated his First Amendment rights and awarded him nominal damages of $17.91 (a symbolic amount referring to the year the First Amendment was ratified). The court also permanently enjoined the board from enforcing its policy to prevent speakers like Mr. Pollak who want to criticize school staff by name.

    [ . . . ]

    To read the full fees order, Pollak v. Wilson, et al., click here.

    Mchangama and Marami on deportation and dissent

    The Trump administration is invoking a clause of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that allows the Secretary of State broad discretion to deport anyone he believes “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” As such, a recently released memo detailing the government’s case against the most prominent of the activists, Mahmoud Khalil, refrains from charging him with any crime. On Friday, a Louisiana immigration judge upheld the Government’s decision to deport Khalil. Constitutional scholars debate whether and to what extent the First Amendment protects noncitizens in such cases, and the Supreme Court may eventually weigh in.

    But the question is not only constitutional — it is foundational. Is deporting foreigners for expressing disfavored views compatible with a robust commitment to a culture of free speech?

    As it turns out, history has a lot to tell us about states that exclude foreigners with controversial opinions and those that welcome non-native dissenters.

    [ . . . ]

    From Zenger to Hitchens, from Abrams to Arendt, it has often been immigrants who tested the boundaries of the First Amendment — and in doing so, helped define its meaning. To now deport people for unpopular opinions is not merely a constitutional gray zone. It is a betrayal of the very idea that truth and progress emerge from argument, not conformity.

    Silencing foreign voices won’t make America safer. It will make it smaller and less resilient. A confident, free nation doesn’t banish speech — it engages it.

    The odd couple: Franks and Corn-Revere in dialogue (and debate) at Brooklyn Law School event

    Robert Corn-Revere and Mary Anne Franks at Fearless Speech

    FIRE Chief Counsel Robert Corn-Revere (left) and Professor Mary Anne Franks

     

    April 17, 2025: Book Talk: Dr. Mary Anne Franks’ Fearless Speech

    Featuring: 

    Dr. Mary Anne Franks — Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law, George Washington Law School; President and Legislative & Tech Policy Director, Cyber Civil Rights Initiative

    Robert Corn-Revere — Chief Counsel, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

    Moderators

    William Araiza, Stanley A. August Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School

    Joel Gora, Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School

    Discussants

    Ron Collins, Co-founder of the History Book Festival and former Harold S. Shefelman Scholar, University of Washington Law School

    Sarah C. Haan, Class of 1958 Uncas and Anne McThenia Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law

    More in the news

    2024-2025 SCOTUS term: Free expression and related cases

    Cases decided

    • Villarreal v. Alaniz (Petition granted. Judgment vacated and case remanded for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam))
    • Murphy v. Schmitt (“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam).”)
    • TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd v. Garland (9-0: The challenged provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.)

    Review granted

    Pending petitions

    Petitions denied

    Emergency Applications

    • Yost v. Ohio Attorney General (Kavanaugh, J., “IT IS ORDERED that the March 14, 2025 order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, case No. 2:24-cv-1401, is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court. It is further ordered that a response to the application be filed on or before Wednesday, April 16, 2025, by 5 p.m. (EDT).”)

    Free speech related

    • Mahmoud v. Taylor (Free exercise case — Issue: Whether public schools burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt out.)
    • Thompson v. United States (Decided: 3-21-25/ 9-0 w special concurrences by Alito and Jackson) (Interpretation of 18 U. S. C. §1014 re “false statements”)

    Last scheduled FAN

    FAN 466: “Sixty-one media organizations and press freedom advocates contest Perkins Coie executive order”

    This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE or Mr. Collins.

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  • ‘Economically Reckless’ Businesses Slam Bill to Bar Immigrant Kids From School – The 74

    ‘Economically Reckless’ Businesses Slam Bill to Bar Immigrant Kids From School – The 74


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    More than two dozen Chattanooga business owners are condemning a bill to require student immigration background checks in Tennessee’s public schools as “economically reckless.”

    The Tennessee Small Business Alliance represents restaurants, real estate firms, retail stores and other local employers operating within the district represented by Sen. Bo Watson.

    Watson, a Republican, is cosponsoring the legislation to require proof of legal residence to enroll in public K-12 and charter schools.  The bill would also give public schools the option of charging tuition to the families of children unable to prove they legally reside in the United States – or to deny them the right to a public education altogether.

    House Leader William Lamberth of Gallatin is a co-sponsor of the bill, which has drawn significant — but not unanimous — support from fellow Tennessee Republicans. Lamberth’s version of the bill differs from Watson’s in that it would make it optional — rather than mandatory — to check students’ immigration status in all of Tennessee’s more than 1700 public schools.

    The bill, one of the most controversial being considered during the 2025 Legislative session, has significant momentum as the Legislature winds down for the year even as it has drawn raucous protests at times.  The legislation will next be debated on Monday in a House committee.

    A statement released by the business alliance described the legislation as a “political stunt that’s cruel, economically reckless, and completely out of step with local values.”

    Citing estimates compiled by the nonprofit advocacy organization, American Immigration Council, the statement noted that more than 430,000 immigrants in Tennessee paid $4.4 billion in taxes – more than $10,000 per immigrant.

    Watson, in an emailed statement from Chattanooga public relations firm Waterhouse Public Relations, said his bill “raises important questions about the financial responsibility of educating undocumented students in Tennessee—questions that have long gone unaddressed.”

    The statement said the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Plyler v. Doe, which established the right to a public school education for all children regardless of immigration status, has “never been re-examined in the context of today’s challenges.” The statement said Watson is committed to a “transparent, fact-driven discussion about how Tennessee allocates its educational resources and how federal mandates impact our state’s budget and priorities.”

    Watson has previously also said the legislation was prompted, in part, by the rising costs of English-language instruction in the state’s public schools.

    Democrats have criticized that argument as based on inaccurate assumptions that English language learners lack legal immigration status.

    Kelly Fitzgerald, founder of a Chattanooga co-working business and one of 27 employers that signed onto the statement of condemnation, criticized lawmakers.

    “Do our representatives believe that undocumented children — who had no say in their immigration status — should be denied a public education, even though their families already pay taxes that fund our schools?” said Fitzgerald, whose own children attend Hamilton County Public schools

    “My children are receiving a great education in our public schools, and I want every child to have the same rights and opportunities as mine do,” she said.

    “In my opinion, this is not something our legislators should be spending their resources on when there are much larger issues at hand in the current environment,” she said. “We should leave children out of the conversation.”

    Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: [email protected].


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