Whether bias-response teams objectively chill students' speech

QUESTION PRESENTED Hundreds of universities have a “bias response team”—an official entity that solicits anonymous reports of bias, tracks them, investigates them, asks to meet with the perpetrators, and threatens to refer students for formal discipline. Universities formally define “bias” to cover wide swaths of protected speech, and their teams are staffed with high-ranking university administrators. The Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits hold that bias-response teams objectively chill students’ speech; but the Seventh Circuit disagrees. Compare Speech First, Inc. v. Schlissel, 939 F.3d 756 (6th Cir. 2019), Speech First, Inc. v. Fenves, 979 F.3d 319 (5th Cir. 2020), and Speech First, Inc. v. Cartwright, 32 F.4th 1110 (11th Cir. 2022), with Speech First, Inc. v. Killeen, 968 F.3d 628 (7th Cir. 2020). All the cases in this split involve the same plaintiff, the same procedural posture, and the same basic facts. And this Court implicitly deemed the split certworthy before, when it Munsingwear’d a similar decision from the Fourth Circuit after pre-certiorari mootness. Speech First, Inc. v. Sands, 144 S.Ct. 675 (2024). The question presented is: Whether bias-response teams objectively chill students’ speech.