Public college students and faculty in Texas would be suspended or expelled for supporting “terrorist activities” if Senate Bill 2233 became law. For student visa-holders, being expelled would likely mean being kicked out of the country as well. It passed the Texas Senate last Tuesday, but appears to be dead for now: it passed the Senate and was referred to a committee in the House.
The bill, which could be resurrected in the future, proposes a severe limit on speech. It targets state university students and employees with non-immigrant visas (like student and work visas), blocking them from “publicly endorsing or espousing terrorist activity related to an ongoing conflict.”
But what counts as terrorism? And what counts as “endorsing”?
The bill uses the federal government’s broad definition of “terrorist activities,” which includes almost any violent activity that is intended to coerce change by a government. That means that ongoing revolutions and militant activism would often fall under this definition – so under the new law, student visa-holders would have to avoid speaking in support of revolutionaries potentially in their home country.
“SB 2233 would put public state universities in the business of monitoring the speech of every international student.” – Daniel Woodward, attorney at Texas Civil Rights Project
That effect would violate the First Amendment, according to Daniel Woodward, a policy attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project who testified before lawmakers about the bill April 16. He said the language goes against Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court decision which held that speech can only be prohibited if it is both intended to incite illegal behavior and likely to actually be successful in doing so.
“SB 2233 would put public state universities in the business of monitoring the speech of every international student,” Woodward said. “The result would be disastrous.”
Here’s how punishments would play out: if a university received a report of terrorist-supporting language or behavior by a non-immigrant visa holder, the university would be compelled to investigate that individual. (The law doesn’t specify who could submit those accusations – people within the university, people in Texas, or anyone anywhere.) If the university confirmed a violation, they would be compelled to suspend the student or the employee for at least a year and report to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The proposed bill adds that students found to have supported “terrorist activity” twice would be expelled, and staff with two violations would be fired. That would likely result in people being kicked out of the country: student visas depend on enrollment at a university, and work visas depend on employers sponsoring their employees.
If universities tried not to enforce the new policy, the financial cost would be massive. For each person reported whom the university fails to investigate (or does not punish after finding a violation), the school would be fined up to 1% of the institution’s annual budget. For UT-Austin, with an annual budget of more than $4 billion, each uninvestigated or unpunished student or teacher could cost the university $42.7 million.
“It’s not just a bad policy, it’s a bad law,” said Noor Saleh, a second-year UT law student, during testimony April 16. “This bill creates the ability and responsibility for Texas universities to monitor and surveil their students, but not all students – students who are here on a visa, students who are immigrants, and students who are Black and brown students in general.”
Saleh argued the bill would violate the First, Fourth, and 14th amendments.
This article appears in May 30 • 2025.