Ongoing: Its always projection and gaslighting
For years, people on the right have complained about the supposed left-wing assault on free speech. Media coverage, relative to the scope of this free speech attack, is scant.
Today, Republican state legislators are proposing legislation to restrict what teachers can say in their classrooms. This trend started in 2021, ten such bills have already become law, but has dramatically accelerated in the first few weeks of this year. A new report by PEN America found that in the first three weeks of 2022 "71 bills have been introduced or prefiled in state legislatures across the country" to restrict the speech of teachers.
Since January 2021, 122 educational gag order bills have been introduced or prefiled in 33 different states
10 have become law in 9 states
88 are currently live
Of those currently live:
- 84 target K-12 schools
- 38 target higher education
- 48 include a mandatory punishment for those found in violation
A closer look at bills introduced or prefiled so far in 2022 reveals a significant escalation in both scale and severity. Forty-six percent of this year’s bills explicitly target speech in higher education (versus 26 percent in 2021) and 55 percent include some kind of mandatory punishment for violators (versus 37 percent in 2021). Fifteen also include a private right of action. This provision, which we analyzed in an earlier post, gives students, parents, or even ordinary citizens the right to sue schools and recover damages in court.