Texas may soon enact restrictions on when and how students can protest

The state of Texas could be set to pass a law putting major limits on protests at its public universities, including banning demonstrations at certain times of day and barring all protests during the final two weeks of the semester.

The law, whose Republican backers describe as an explicit response to the state’s pro-Palestine campus protests, would impact more than one million students at one of the nation’s largest public university systems and has drawn criticism from free speech advocates and students.

“While the world watched Columbia, Harvard and other campuses across the country taken hostage by pro-terrorist mobs last year, Texas stood firm. UT allowed protest, not anarchy,” State Senator Brandon Creighton told The Washington Post about his bill. “No First Amendment rights were infringed — and they never will be. This is how we protect student safety, defend our institutions, and safeguard freedom for generations to come.”

The bill, Senate Bill 2972, would prohibit protests between 10pm and 8am, ban students from erecting tents and wearing disguises like masks, bar the use of drums and microphones, and halt “expressive activities” during the final two weeks of class.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has until the end of the week to decide on the law, which will go into effect if he declines to act. His office has not indicated how he will proceed.

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Civil rights advocates argue the bill’s provisions contradict the spirit of a 2019 Texas law, passed when Republicans largely argued campuses overly restricted conservative speech, that mandated universities ensure all outdoor common areas were considered traditional public forums where anyone could protest as long as they weren’t breaking the law or disrupting university functions.

“S.B. 2972 threatens the free expression of all Texans, regardless of political beliefs,” Caro Achar of the Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in a statement. “This bill imposes broad restrictions that allow school officials to restrict how, when, and where Texans can speak on campus — undermining the First Amendment rights of students, faculty, staff, and the general public.”

“I don’t know that we’ve seen a law regulating campus expression that’s this restrictive,” Tyler Coward, a lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told The New York Times of the bill.

The “expressive activity” limited in the bill could range from a conversation to a t-shirt with a slogan, others warned.

In 2024, Texas saw large-scale campus pro-Palestine protests, and state officials responded by sending in over 100 state troopers to clear out a protest encampment at the University of Texas at Austin. All told, over 150 were arrested at state universities last April.

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In the wake of widespread pro-Palestine encampments on campus last year, universities across the country reiterated existing restrictions and imposed new rules on protest, including mask bans and time-place-and-manner limits.

During the recent Los Angeles protests against federal immigration raids, Donald Trump unilaterally claimed masks were no longer allowed at protests, despite having no legal authority to make such a demand.

Protest restrictions have also been a key sticking point in the administration’s negotiations with top universities like Harvard and Columbia, which the White House has alleged aren’t doing enough to stop campus antisemitism that flared during the protests.

The administration has sought to pause funding to these Ivy League schools unless they submit to wide-ranging reforms.

Harvard has challenged the administration, while Columbia has largely acceded to the Trump demands, including partially banning face masks.