Santiago Lopez joined the Society of Unconventional Drummers, or SOUnD, his first month as a UT Austin student.
The club uses buckets, bicycles, tools — basically anything — to create music.
“Our main mission is to show people around the Austin community that music can be created out of like almost anything and that anyone can become a musician,” Lopez said. “I found that really beautiful.”
The club celebrates with a show at the end of each semester. But under a new state law that went into effect Sept. 1, that performance would technically be unlawful.
Senate Bill 2972 restricts students at public universities from engaging in “expressive activities” between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. During the last two weeks of a given semester, they also cannot invite public speakers to the university, use a device to amplify sound, or, most importantly to Lopez, use percussion instruments.
"Even if they were trying to limit this to disruptive protests — big noisy protests that they don't want held in the middle of the night — the target that they’ve painted is a lot bigger than that."Adam Steinbaugh, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
SOUnD filed a lawsuit Wednesday with several other student organizations at UT Austin and UT Dallas against the schools' respective presidents, the UT Board of Regents and UT System Chancellor Dr. John Zerwas over the new state law.
The bill was authored by state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, who was named on Thursday as the lone finalist for chancellor at Texas Tech. In his bill analysis, Creighton pointed to protests on college campuses in April 2024 as the reasoning for tighter restrictions surrounding “expressive activities.” The protest on the UT Austin campus was attended by hundreds of people and resulted in dozens of arrests.
Creighton did not respond to requests for comment before publication.
Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit civil liberties group representing the students, said the new law infringes on students' right to free speech.
He said “expressive activity” could mean wearing a T-shirt with a political message, publishing a student newspaper or holding a sign.
“Even if they were trying to limit this to disruptive protests — big noisy protests that they don't want held in the middle of the night — the target that they’ve painted is a lot bigger than that,” Steinbaugh said.
Steinbaugh is calling on the U.S. District Court in Austin to issue a preliminary injunction, preventing enforcement of the law until a final ruling in the case.
In a written statement, the UT System said, “The UT System has not reviewed the lawsuit yet, and because it is a matter of litigation, we are not able to offer additional comment at this time.”
The new state law sharply contrasts a bill Texas legislators passed just six years ago that expanded free speech protections on public university campuses.
“The policy must allow individuals to engage in expressive activities on campus and enable student organizations and faculty to invite speakers to speak on campus," the bill's author, state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, said in 2019.
At the time, Huffman also called for “disciplinary sanctions for students, student organizations or faculties who unduly interfere with others' free speech rights."
Steinbaugh said he suspects lawmakers are backtracking because the political winds have shifted.
“They looked at campuses at that time and said, ‘The speech we like is under threat and needs to be protected,’ which was true,” he said. “But now they are looking at it and seeing people exercising speech in ways they do not like and trying to figure out a way to stop it.”
