The University of Sussex has accused the Office for Students (OfS) of “giving free rein” to hate speech, including homophobia and transphobia, as it launched a legal challenge to the regulator’s unprecedented fine.

The university was fined £585,000 ($756,000) last month for a trans-inclusive policy which the OfS, a non-departmental public body of the Department for Education, said restricted the freedom of speech of gender-critical activist professor Kathleen Stock, as well as for others with similar views.

The university’s policy reportedly required staff and students to “positively represent trans people”, with transphobia “not [being] tolerated”. The OfS said this could lead to censorship and resulted in Stock, who is regularly given a public platform, becoming “more cautious” about expressing her beliefs.

The OfS launched an investigation after protests erupted on campus, when students called for Stock’s dismissal. She left the university in 2021.

In a pre-action protocol letter, dated 27 March, which seeks a judicial review of the ruling, lawyers for the university said the OfS was “not empowered to set a public interest governance condition that covers documents that are not a provider’s ‘governing documents’,” while the trans policy in question was “not a governing document”.

The letter went on to claim: “The OfS does not have jurisdiction to assess whether the university has complied with its own internal scheme of delegation. That jurisdiction is reserved to the king, as the visitor of the university, and nothing… expressly or by necessary implication intrudes on the king’s jurisdiction.”

Furthermore, the lawyers claimed, the OfS had “no statutory or other power to expend funds (which it raises by levying fees on providers) to investigate and opine on ‘other regulatory concerns’ beyond the regulatory conditions (and its analysis of these other matters is, in any event, wrong in law)”.

On Wednesday (9 April), Sasha Roseneil, the university’s vice-chancellor, claimed that the OfS investigation had been “deeply flawed” and said the decision decreed a “form of free-speech absolutism as the new golden rule for universities”.

Roseneil went on to say: “It would appear that universities can only control a very narrowly defined version of unlawful speech that ignores our broader legal and ethical obligations to students and staff. It is an unworkable and highly detrimental decision for the whole higher education sector.”

Writing on the Higher Education Policy Institute blog, she said the decision “implies that universities cannot have policies that aim to reduce abuse, bullying and harassment, whether motivated by transphobia, antisemitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism or sexism”, adding: “It is, I fear, a charter that risks giving free rein to antisemitic, anti-Muslim, homophobic, racist, sexist and anti-trans speech and expression in universities, as long as it stays just on the right side of the law.

“Moreover, the decision could be significantly at odds both with the wider legal obligations of universities in relation to equalities, and with the OfS’s own regulatory expectations regarding equality of opportunity for students, the quality and standards of the academic experience, and the soon-to-be-introduced requirement to take steps to protect students from harassment and sexual misconduct.”

The decision was “regressive and dangerous” and “threatens the cohesion and governability of each of England’s diverse and vibrant universities”, Roseneil concluded, calling for the fine to be set aside.

The post University of Sussex accuses Office for Students of ‘giving free reign’ to ‘homophobic and anti-trans speech’ appeared first on PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news.