Idaho retreats from ban on discussing abortion in classrooms

The US state of Idaho is retreating – at least strategically – from its first-in-the-nation attempt to restrict discussions of abortion in academic settings, under legal pressure from shaken faculty.

After the filing of a federal court lawsuit against the state’s policy, Idaho’s attorney general, Raúl Labrador, said that government officials cannot interpret a new state law prohibiting abortion funding to mean a silencing of public university professors.

Mr Labrador, a Republican, issued the opinion more than a year after the University of Idaho warned its faculty that the state’s “No Public Funds for Abortion” Act required “instructor neutrality” for any classroom discussions “on topics related to abortion or contraception”.

Other public universities in the state gave similar warnings, and multiple faculty – in fields that include philosophy, political science, history, literature, social work and journalism – have reported adjusting their teaching to comply.

The situation led a coalition of professors from across the state to file a lawsuit in federal court arguing that the restrictions impose a constitutionally impermissible limit on their free speech.

“There’s been an enormous amount of chilling across classrooms” in Idaho from the law, said Scarlet Kim, a senior staff attorney with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which helped to bring the lawsuit.

Given that context, Ms Kim said, the plaintiffs would proceed with their lawsuit and not take the statement by Mr Labrador as a definitive resolution – because Mr Labrador had had months to give universities an assurance the law posed no threat of academic interference and chose not to, she said.

“It was only in the wake of us filing the lawsuit that the attorney general decided to issue any interpretation of the act, even though he has had ample opportunity to do so,” she said.

A spokesman for Mr Labrador said he had no comment on the reasoning for issuing his written opinion on the matter, which he presented a response to a query from a state lawmaker.

The Idaho case appeared unique in terms of its focus on abortion, Ms Kim said, but fitted with a number of other instances of conservative policymakers across the country trying to legislatively restrict classroom teachings.

The most prominent among them is the so-called Stop Woke Act in Florida – also now under litigation – which aimed to prohibit classroom instruction that suggests Americans take any responsibility for past discrimination with respect to race, sex or national origin.

Also this year, the student newspaper at the University of Florida refused to run an advertisement for mail-order abortion pills, which are legal for use in the state, out of concern that it might draw prosecutorial legal attention from the administration and allies of Governor Ron DeSantis.

Faculty pursuing the lawsuit in Idaho include a philosophy professor teaching a course on applied ethics who said she completely removed a core part of her class that involved readings taking differing views on abortion, and a political science professor who cancelled a planned lecture about abortion policy.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include individual professors from the University of Idaho and Boise State University, and faculty unions covering those two institutions and Idaho State University.

Another advocacy group involved in free-speech issues, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), said Mr Labrador “got it right in recognising that the First Amendment protects scholarship and teaching”. But the group said it agreed with the ACLU that the attorney general’s statement should not end the lawsuit.

“It’s a positive development,” said an attorney with Fire, Adam Steinbaugh. “But it’s been a year with faculty uncertain whether their scholarship might risk criminal prosecution.”

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com