Teaching universities about free speech

The University of Texas at Austin has enacted several campus speech restrictions that border on the absurd: Students are prohibited from saying or writing anything allegedly “biased, offensive, or harassing.” Students can potentially face discipline from the “Campus Climate Response Team” for any number of speech violations. And even questioning someone else’s beliefs could land a student in hot water if the questions could be perceived as offensive by a potential listener.
 
Now, however, backed by a group called Speech First, three students are fighting back—with PLF’s support. And as Tim Snowball writes, given the growing threat to free speech on public college campuses, PLF’s brief in this federal lawsuit is only the first in our advocacy for college students’ right to speak their minds free from the threat of punishment.

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A rancher’s property rights and the right to conserve

When Curtis Martin bought his property in Oregon, the land had an unhealthy, narrow creek with little surrounding vegetation. The creek was eroding its own bed, was uninhabitable for wildlife, depleted the local groundwater, and threatened roads with flooding and washouts.

So Curtis partnered with local conservation groups to make ecologically sound improvements to the creek, and today, it is a very different scene.

Unfortunately, as Tony Francois tells us, Curtis and other private property owners throughout the Pacific Northwest now find themselves battling the Environmental Protection Agency for the right to conserve their own land.

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California’s concerns about unlicensed blow-drying are overblown

As a teenager, Tanique Bell dreamed of becoming a successful freelance hairstylist. She didn’t want to dye hair, or even to cut it. She simply wanted to style it, performing blow-dries and up-dos — hopefully for celebrities. But California’s regulatory regime nearly crushed those dreams.

California’s onerous regulations require aspiring hairstylists to get a full-blown, expensive cosmetologist’s license, which involves hours of training in non-hairstyling services, including nail care, waxing, and facials.

In their op-ed for The Orange County Register, Anastasia Boden and Tim Snowball explain how licensure laws stand as an irrational barrier to entrepreneurship and serve no legitimate public health or safety interests.

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