In Fall of 2020, YAL’s Director of Free Speech sent letters to dozens of schools across the country informing them that they had speech codes that violated the First Amendment and that, if enforced, these codes could hold the school liable for civil rights violations.

Administrators at Midwestern State University very quickly reached out to YAL to find out more and to ask for help in changing the policies to become more constitutionally compliant. YAL’s DFS connected the school with FIRE, who worked through the Spring Semester to craft a policy that not only removed the unconstitutional speech codes, but also implemented an “Anonymous Posting” policy that opened up areas on campus to anonymous speech that otherwise would not have been protected.