The U.S. House of Representatives passed the End Woke Higher Education Act, H.R. 3724, on Thursday with a vote of 213-201.
The legislation combined Rep. Burgess Owens’s (R-Utah) Accreditation for College Excellence Act and Rep. Brandon Williams’s (R-N.Y.) Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act. These respective bills sought to prevent university accreditors from forcing schools to submit to a political or partisan ideology and to stop them from suppressing the rights of free speech.
Four Democrats voted for the act’s passage: Reps. Don Davis (D-N.C.), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Mary Sattler Peltola (D-Alaska) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.).
Ahead of the vote, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) delivered a speech on what she described as “three conservative statements—to express three truths—that would otherwise be punishable offenses on today’s college campuses.”
Academic institutions that fail to abide by the legislation’s free speech protections for students could lose government funding. The bill also requires colleges to educate students about First Amendment rights and annually disclose free speech policies. It protects religious colleges by preventing government accreditors from disrupting religious adherence, practices or codes of conduct.
“This is not the education system that our founders envisioned in their quest for America to become a more perfect union,” Owens wrote following his bill’s passage. “The left’s attacks on the academic freedom and constitutional rights of America’s colleges and universities end today.”
On Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden announced his opposition to the bill, saying it would “micromanage both public and private institutions, undermining their ability to recognize and promote diversity.” He stated that “this legislation would further undermine efforts to make colleges welcoming to all students.”
Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) voted for the bill and posted on X that colleges do not need sanctioning “by agencies that encourage woke and partisan viewpoints.”
Foxx said the law “will restore the essential freedoms that make our universities the global leaders of open debate and intellectual growth, ensuring that the next generation of Americans can think for themselves and engage in the pursuit of truth.”
