Dive Brief:
- The Virginia General Assembly is poised to pass legislation that would limit political influence over and protect First Amendment rights at the state's public colleges.
- Under the most recent iteration of the bill, each college's governing board would be blocked from making decisions that would restrict or censor expression on the basis of viewpoint or "for the purpose of ideological correction or conformity or advancing or promoting any partisan objective."
- House and Senate lawmakers have each passed a version of the bill. Representatives from each chamber this week entered talks to resolve the differences between their iterations.
Dive Insight:
The legislation, introduced by state Del. Lily Franklin, combines proposals from two other Democratic lawmakers and covers higher ed issues ranging from academic free speech to how governing boards are appointed.
But state House and Senate lawmakers still need to hammer out the details of the bill.
Under the version passed by the Senate, each public college's board would have to adopt policies "defining and implementing shared governance" across all shareholders of the college, including the trustees, college employees and students. The boards would also be formally banned from infringing on academic freedom, including by taking — or threatening to take — disciplinary action against faculty for exercising their First Amendment rights.
The original text from Franklin would have instead directed trustees to get faculty input at least twice a year and before a college makes decisions regarding presidential searches.
Virginia's public colleges, like higher ed institutions across the country, have faced criticism from both sides of the aisle over their handling of academic freedom. For example, Republicans and conservative groups have accused the University of Virginia of failing to foster intellectual diversity. But liberals and faculty have called the increasingly visible political influence over the flagship a sign of waning shared governance.
The House's version of the bill would open up seats on the Virginia Commission on Higher Education Board Appointments — the executive branch's advisory council — to more people outside of the General Assembly. For example, it would allow the commission to have up to 15 members who are private citizens, not legislators. The current cap is six. The commission could also choose more faculty and former higher education leaders to join, after having previously been restricted to one each.
Additionally, Franklin's bill would direct the state's Office of the Attorney General to study how feasible it would be to transfer the responsibility of hiring and employing a college's legal counsel to that institution's governing board.
The bill reaffirms that no one appointed by the governor may start without confirmation from lawmakers, indirectly taking aim at many of the issues that have arisen at Virginia public colleges in recent years.
Last summer, then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, sought to appoint a handful of members to UVA, George Mason, and Virginia Military Institute’s boards.
But Virginia’s Democrat-controlled Senate committee on privileges and elections rejected Youngkin's appointments, at which point he instructed his picks to begin serving anyway. The ensuing legal battle left all three boards with several unfilled seats throughout 2025 and ended with a federal judge blocking Youngkin's actions.
When Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger took office at the beginning of the year, she appointed more than two dozen board members to the trio of boards on her first day. The state Senate’s committee approved those appointments shortly thereafter.
