The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has an update to their report on an University of North Carolina speech code that it had warned the school was unconstititional:

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has indefinitely suspended an unconstitutional speech code used against student Landen Gambill, who drew national attention for her public complaints about the university’s treatment of her sexual assault allegation against a fellow student. Due to the efforts of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), UNC was explicitly aware that this very policy was unconstitutional more than a year ago.

“Despite having the chance to revise this unconstitutional policy years ago, at the prompting of FIRE and its own students, UNC refused to do so. Nevertheless, FIRE is pleased that UNC finally understands that broad and vague restrictions on speech imperil student rights,” said FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley. “FIRE stands ready to assist UNC in reevaluating its policies in the hopes that the university can avoid further compromising its students’ right to free speech and the embarrassing yet completely predictable disasters that result.”

FIRE has long identified the policy used to charge Gambill, which regulates “disruptive or intimidating behavior,” as a “yellow light” speech code, which means the policy could be used to ban or excessively regulate speech protected by the First Amendment. However, when the code’s constitutional problems were brought to the attention of Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Winston Crisp early last year, Crisp deemed himself comfortable with the policy, despite acknowledging that it “could be applied loosely and be problematic.”

When Gambill was brought before UNC’s Honor Court this February, FIRE warned that the charges violated the First Amendment. Former FIRE intern and UNC student David Deerson had already been engaged in campus activism to prompt UNC to revise its policies. Deerson wrote a letter to The Daily Tar Heel informing administrators that the charges against Gambill could not withstand constitutional scrutiny.

UNC has belatedly arrived at the same conclusion as FIRE—but only after substantial embarrassment, including a retaliation complaint filed with the federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights….

Universities like UNC will likely face similar problems in the future in the wake of the unconstitutional federal “blueprint” that mandates unconstitutionally broad speech codes on nearly all college campuses. Following the Departments of Justice and Education’s controversial decision to redefine sexual harassment as all “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” (including speech), colleges will increasingly find themselves forced to violate the First Amendment ….