Williams College: Suppression of Freedom of Association by Nondiscrimination Policy

Case Materials

• "FIRE's Letter to Williams' College," December 15, 2000
• "Willams College," December 1, 2000: Williams College informed its student groups that the college's statement of non-discrimination requirements applied to the activities of voluntary student associations. Such a move would have denied the right to freedom of association promised by the college in its publications. In May, the college sent a memo instructing student groups to adopt "non-discrimination" language in their constitutions or lose their ability to exist as campus groups. Importantly, Williams only mentioned the category of sexual orientation—not, for example, the category of religion or race—and justified this imposition by asserting, without any specific citations, that Williams's actions in this regard were "completely dictated by the Federal Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights guidelines for non-discrimination."