IU, Purdue not in full agreement with state's arguments in 'intellectual diversity' case - The Indiana Lawyer (2024)

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In an ongoing lawsuit challenging a new law on higher education curriculum, Indiana’s two top universities released a statement Monday separating themselves from the Office of the Attorney General’s arguments.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed the lawsuit in May on behalf of two professors at Purdue University Fort Wayne, with the complaint claiming Senate Enrolled Act 202 violated the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.

SEA 202 states professors must be disciplined if they fail to “foster a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity” and “expose students to scholarly works from a variety of political or ideological frameworks.”

The complaint claims the law is ambiguous.

Both Steven Carr, a professor of communication and the director of Purdue’s Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and David Schuster, an associate professor in the university’s history department, stated they are fearful of the law’s penalties if they were to fail to comply with the law.

Penalties can include the revocation of tenure, discipline or termination.

“SEA 202 puts Indiana’s professors in an untenable position. Through vague language and the threat of harsh sanctions, including termination, the law strips professors of the academic freedom that the Supreme Court has long recognized they have the right to exercise,” ACLU of Indiana Staff Attorney Stevie Pactor said in a news release. “No professor should have to choose between their employment and their First Amendment rights.”

The plaintiffs motioned for a preliminary injunction before the law was set to go into effect on July 1. However, a ruling on the preliminary injunction has not been given at this time.

The Office of the Attorney General has motioned to dismiss the lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction.

“This lawsuit by the ACLU is illegitimate and lacks standing. To protect Hoosier students in the classroom, we will continue defending this new Indiana law, which ensures that state universities foster diversity of thought – not indoctrination,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita posted on X following the filing.

Indiana University and Purdue University had their outside counsel at Barnes & Thornburg LLP join a legal brief from Rokita’s office that argued the universities’ faculty have no First Amendment rights in the classroom.

“Under the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Garcetti, educators do not have a First Amendment right to control curriculum,” the brief stated.

The Attorney General’s Office cited Garcetti v. Ceballos, a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court case in which the high court held when public employees make statements on relation to their official duties, they are not protected by the First Amendment.

“The classroom curriculum of a public university is government speech set in accordance with State law,” the brief stated.

On Monday, the universities filed a statement clarifying they only agreed with the first part of the brief on the plaintiff’s standing and the ripeness of the case for adjudication.

“To conserve Universities’ fiscal resources and for judicial economy, rather than file a separate brief, University Defendants filed a joinder [ECF59] concurring that ‘dispositive jurisdictional issues of ripeness and standing referenced in’ the State’s Rule 12(b)(1) motion and brief warrant dismissal of the lawsuit and denial of the requested preliminary injunction,” the statement clarified.

Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Steve Sanders wrote about the universities joining the state’s legal brief last week on Medium.

“As I explained in the original story, Rokita’s arguments about the First Amendment were addressed to the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction,” Sanders wrote on Medium. “In light of the new filing, IU is telling the court only that the case should be dismissed at the threshold on standing and ripeness grounds. But it has offered no argument in opposition to the PI in the (unlikely, I think) event the judge finds the plaintiffs have standing.”

According to PACER, Senior Judge Sarah Evans Barker entered a final pretrial conference for Jan. 13, 2026, and a bench trial for Jan. 26, 2026.

The case is Steven Alan Carr, et al. v. Trustees of Purdue University, et al., 1:24-cv-772.