Yale Law School Bars Press From Free Speech Panel. Yes, Really.

After similar events were disrupted by Yale Law School students last March 2022, the press ban is now in effect

Yale Law School promised students activists last week that they would bar press Kristen Waggoner was the conservative lawyer whose last speech at Yale Law School ended in a police escort. The group hosting the event, Yale Law School’s chapter of the Federalist Society, agreed to those ground rules, students said.

The school did not break its word Tuesday, except that of the Washington Free Beacon The media are prohibited from covering the event. Administrators stated that media were also forbidden from lingering in the hallways outside the event, in keeping with the law school’s published media policyGuests were asked to show their Yale Law School ID.

Whatever policies are on the books, this appears to be the first time many of them were enforced—and certainly the first time they were enforced so aggressively. Students and professors spoke anonymously outside, and said that they’d never seen such a coordinated and forceful effort to restrict access to events.

The spectacle suggests that last year’s meltdown, in which student protesters drowned out a panel on free speech featuring Waggoner and Monica Miller, an attorney with the American Humanist Association, still haunts the law school, which has been seeking to rehabilitate its reputation in the wake of the fallout. Fourteen federal judges announced this fall that they would no longer hire clerks from Yale Law, saying the incident—and the school’s failure to discipline those involved in it—demonstrated an unacceptable hostility to conservative views.

The Tuesday event seemed to go without a hitch. Nadine Strossen (the former president the American Civil Liberties Union) joined Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, to discuss First Amendment law. It was, according to all accounts, a friendly, well-managed discussion. Students that left the event stated that there were no ear-shattering shouts, no profanity laden signs and no ad-hoc questions.

“There was not even a peaceful protest,” Strossen spoke at the Free Beacon.

This was quite a contrast to the march last March when protesters shouted, heckled and banged on doors. The chaos was so intense that Waggoner who has represented a number religious liberty cases in the Supreme Court had to be taken out of the building.

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