It’s Graduation Season. What Are the First Amendment Implications When Universities Disinvite Commencement Speakers?

An aerial shot of graduates wearing black caps and gowns

May. 20, 2026

Each year, spring brings parades of graduates. Dressed in caps and gowns, they'll cross a stage to get their diplomas and listen to inspirational words from a commencement speaker.

And nearly every year, controversy builds over who some universities have chosen to deliver those inspirational words. Speakers across the ideological spectrum have been on the receiving end of protests and outcry on campuses calling for their removal.

Following such protests in 2026, administrators at public universities in states including Utah, South Carolina and New Jersey disinvited their chosen speakers.

Utah Valley University disinvited Sharon McMahon, a former teacher turned author and podcaster, after she faced backlash for a social media post critical of Charlie Kirk following his assassination. South Carolina State University disinvited South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, a Republican running for governor, after students at the historically Black university protested because of Evette’s political views. And Rutgers’ engineering school disinvited biotech executive Rami Elghandour after students said they would boycott the ceremony because of Elghandour’s past criticism of Israel.

The trend isn’t new. In 2017, Texas Southern University disinvited Sen. John Cornyn, and in 2020, Wichita State University in Kansas disinvited Ivanka Trump. Private schools, including Xavier University and the University of Southern California, have encountered similar situations, but unlike public universities, they are not bound by the First Amendment.

In this article, we look at the First Amendment issues surrounding public universities’ decisions to disinvite their commencement speakers.

This analysis concerns only public colleges and universities, as they are government entities bound by the First Amendment. These schools are viewed as particularly important havens for free speech and free expression in American society.

First Amendment analysis of commencement speaker disinvitations

Whether a school’s decision to disinvite a commencement speaker violates the First Amendment depends foremost on whether courts are likely to view commencement as a school-sponsored event.

In general, a school can disinvite its speaker for many reasons without violating the First Amendment if the commencement is deemed to be school-sponsored and the specific content is considered government speech, a situation where the government (the public university, in this case) is expressing its own message. Government speech is generally immune from First Amendment review, meaning a university would have wide latitude to disinvite a speaker if the choice and speech is deemed government speech. Courts determine whether something is government speech using the following criteria established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021:

Has the government historically controlled that particular form of speech?
Has the government exercised active control over the speech and shaped its message?
Would the audience understand the speech to be on behalf of the government?

With those considerations in mind, courts would likely find the commencement speech is government speech if:

School administrators have always curated the commencement program.
Administrators have chosen the speakers, paid those speakers, and placed parameters on their speech, like prohibiting discussion of politics or requiring advice for the graduates.
Audience members understand that a person is speaking on behalf of the school.

In some cases, a court may find one speaker at a commencement ceremony is engaged in government speech, but another speaker at the same event is not.

Why we’re using the government speech doctrine here

Because there haven’t been many court cases in which a disinvited speaker sues a public university on First Amendment grounds, there isn’t a clear framework for analyzing university commencements.

This article uses the government speech doctrine because it presents an easily understood set of guidelines and because courts often treat public university commencement programs and/or individual speakers as school-sponsored speech, or as closely analogous to government speech, although this depends on the facts and context of each case.

For more detailed reading on commencement ceremonies and speakers, see:

What happens when commencement is school-sponsored and/or the speaker is engaged in government speech?

In most cases, courts would likely consider the formal program of the ceremony to be a school-sponsored event, with most, if not all, of the speech content akin to government speech.

This is because, unlike campus spaces and events that invite broad participation or debate, universities typically exercise a large amount of control over the programming of commencement ceremonies and use the events to communicate their own message from the stage. However, based on the criteria above, it’s possible for there to be different answers for different speakers.

If courts view the speaker as engaging in government speech, universities have wide latitude to invite and disinvite that speaker for any reason, including the speaker's viewpoints and potential safety issues driven by backlash to the choice.

However, if the university disinvites a speaker because of pressure from other government officials, that pressure campaign could violate the First Amendment.

Like anyone else, government officials are allowed to express their opinions, including on a public university’s choice of commencement speaker. But they cross a line if they use the power of government to pressure schools into disinviting a speaker.

If a lawmaker simply expresses annoyance or disapproval with a commencement speaker, it probably doesn’t cross a line. But if they suggest that the university could face adverse consequences (like lost funding) unless administrators disinvite the speaker, that could violate the First Amendment because it is evidence of viewpoint discrimination.

The government can’t require funding recipients to express a particular viewpoint in order to receive funding. The disinvited speaker might have a First Amendment-based claim against any government official who engaged in this form of viewpoint discrimination.

Courts determine whether public officials crossed a line by considering:

The authority the public official has over the university and whether they hold any power to harm the institution
The word choice and tone the public official used
Whether the university's administration would be likely to perceive that official’s comment as a threat
Whether the official made any direct references to adverse consequences the university could face

What happens when commencement isn’t school-sponsored and/or the speaker isn’t engaged in government speech?

There are rare instances where a court could find that a commencement event isn’t school-sponsored, and a speaker isn’t engaged in government speech. Such scenarios include:

The university had given up the kind of active control over the commencement ceremony, or the speech, that normally places commencement events firmly in government speech territory.
The university opened a portion of the ceremony to student- or faculty-selected speakers, told those speakers they were free to offer their own views and didn’t request to review the content in advance. In these cases, speakers over whose speech the university exercises more control may be engaged in government speech, but speakers over whose speech there is less university control may not be.

These kinds of arrangements would look much less like the university’s own message and more like an open forum for personal expression. As a result, disinviting a speaker could raise First Amendment concerns.

Like with a school-sponsored event, it would violate the First Amendment for administrators to disinvite a speaker based on pressure from other government officials.

But in these limited cases, it could also violate the First Amendment if administrators disinvite a speaker because of the speaker’s viewpoints or opinions.

Finally, in these instances, it would violate the First Amendment for the school to disinvite the speaker, or force them to stop midspeech, because of disruption created by protesters. (If that disruption turns violent, becoming a clear public safety issue, the university may be justified in stopping the speech as a last resort.)

This is because of a First Amendment principle called the hecklers’ veto.

The principle dictates that once someone has permission to speak, they cannot be silenced because of the reaction of a crowd. First and foremost, the university has an obligation to do what it can to ensure the event goes on, and the speaker is not silenced.

This means the university must remove speakers who disrupt the speech or commencement ceremony.

If attendees attempt to “shout down” a speaker or carry large signs that block others' view, the school would be permitted to remove those individuals. However, they must do so in a “viewpoint-neutral” manner, meaning anybody who shouts or holds a large sign is removed regardless of whether they support or oppose the speaker.

The bottom line on disinviting commencement speakers and the First Amendment

American colleges and universities have a long history of controversy surrounding commencement speakers.

In most cases, when a public university decides to disinvite a commencement speaker, that decision is treated as an act of government speech unlikely to raise First Amendment concerns.

In rarer circumstances, schools’ commencement-related decisions might implicate the First Amendment, particularly when they go beyond shaping the university’s own message and instead restrict, punish or discriminate against the speaker’s personal speech.

Katie Bernard is a rapid response writer at Freedom Forum. She can be reached at [email protected].

This article was compiled with contributions from Freedom Forum experts, including Vice President and First Amendment Expert Kevin Goldberg and First Amendment Specialist Alex Morey.