In response to a lawsuit filed by the leaders of two conservative student groups, the Georgia Institute of Technology agreed this week to change portions of a speech policy for students living in on-campus housing that lawyers had challenged as unconstitutional, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. On Monday, a federal judge ordered Georgia Tech to abide by that agreement and put the speech code under judicial supervision, meaning the university will have to go to the judge if it wants to change the policy in the next five years.

The university amended the code by taking out wording that prohibits students from any attempt to “injure, harm” or “malign” a person because of “race, religious belief, color, sexual/affectational orientation, national origin, disability, age or gender.”

The speech-code issue was just one of a list of complaints brought by the student-group leaders, who say university policies intended to protect students from intolerance end up, instead, discriminating against conservative students who speak out against homosexuality, feminism, and other issues.

David A. French, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal-advocacy group that is representing the students, called the court order a “win for free speech.” Georgia Tech officials said they could not comment because the lawsuit is still pending.

Georgia Tech is not alone as a target of such litigation. Pennsylvania State University agreed in May to revise its policies on nondiscrimination and intolerance after facing a similar lawsuit (The Chronicle, May 25). Two years ago, a federal judge struck down “free-speech zones” at Texas Tech University (The Chronicle, October 4, 2004), and, in a legal settlement with a free-speech advocacy group, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania agreed to alter its campus code of conduct (The Chronicle, February 25, 2004).