that policy disobeyed all guns in the classroom policy which is part of the broader policy of concealed carry for weapons on campus on behalf of the three university of texas professors who are parents here i want to focus on only a part of the subset of the challenge and that is the only part that was addressed below which is standing of these plaintiffs these professors to lodge their friends to me in the challenge against the compelled guns in the classroom policy i want to address it and in three in order of three things the big issue is standing but first i want to cite what is the policy briefly and what is the challenge and then what is the test for standing and i hope to cover the first two very briefly what is the policy the better guns in the classroom the policy is that students at the university of texas in any other public university campus not private university but students at university of texas at austin or allowed to carry concealed guns that are loaded on to the campus they have to keep them concealed but they can carry him on to the campus and they can carry them into the classrooms let me ask policies they develop their own policies and frankly your honor i don't know all of the details on their policy to try and get those but we just talk about universe texas system not austin per se but throughout yes and with but since we get this is a standing issue we've got three professors at the ritz of texas at austin that are asserting this claim but let me say this policy applies more broadly in an attorney general opinion or at least it's been said to apply more broadly the attorney attorney general opinion k p dash fifty one which came out shortly after the statute was passed the the attorney general said the the statute says nothing about compelled compulsion to allow gun loaded guns in the classroom but he concluded that because of the pro have bishan there in the legislation say that you can't have a general prohibition on carrying campus that the result of that the logic of the idea is you have to allow guns in the classroom otherwise you would have a general policy against gun on campus concealed carry on other words the state is no longer forbidding students from bringing guns to are now on out that we are trying they're allowing that that's the first part of the policy the second part of the policy which i was going to get to after mentioning k p fifty one and what is focused on is the other part of the policy is professors cannot prohibit those students from carrying loaded weapons into their semester starting that said you may not even discourage students from bringing guns loaded guns into your classroom so the probation on the professor say you may not bring or please don't bring guns into my classroom is the main focus of our policy because this brings me to what is the challenge that the challenge by these three professors is we are challenging the broad policy of guns on campus we don't even challenging the broad policy of guns in the classroom what we're challenging is the prohibition on us exercising our own individual options not in my classroom you may not bring them into my classroom so other professors may have different views may be perfectly comfortable with it i think the suggestion is a lot of them aren't because of the u t fact a position on this but nonetheless others is this is just for these three professors saying we want the option to say we do not want you to bring guns into our classroom and you may not bring guns into our classroom so there's the church that's the focus of their challenge on that policy so what happens if a professor violates that they are subject to there was quite a bit of  debate about this actually at the preliminary injunction hearing but it looked like for a while that there was no consequence from saying you may not but the university then insisted yes we might bring the full weight of disciplin procedures down on you it's in the in the handbook i honestly don't remember the number right now it seems like it's three zero one zero eight in the university of texas policy but it's in the it's in brief but i don't remember the exact citation to it but they can be disciplined by university officials and it can be up to and including destroy if they violate that policy so they face consequences here if they exercised what the option they want to exercise which is don't bring guns in my classroom what is their first amendment challenge about this what's the house the first a minute implicated by this as the we have extensive not since we have declarations from the three professors we have extensive allegations in the complaint amended complaint about the consequences of this for first amendment purposes and that is the professor say from their long experience and all of them have a lot of experience that they engage in the extensive robust classroom debate that's the way they test things in their classroom they like to push the limits they teach the controversy of classes issues about reproductive rights issues about gay rights other issues one teaches virginia woolf which i don't think is that controversy but some people don't like her but anyway so they have we don't know who's carrying a gun a loaded gun in the campus in our classroom wilton school closed the spectrum down of health much debate it will be in the classroom so it's not a specific content based restriction it is a restriction on the a man out of academic debate in freedom that's exercised in the classroom and this is the perfect as i see it there it's their declarations in there i should have included in the record  and i didn't but they're in the record that talk about this also is your argument basically that the possibility of guns in the classroom brought by student that that's what chills the discussion if it's the act of the student it's the no it's the policy that keeps the professors from saying you can't bring a gun in because they can't know on any given day whether a student is sitting there with a loaded gun or three students are sitting there with the right nervous student sitting there with a loaded gun it's the policy that the university has said you can't exclude them that is the problem because they have to sit there and say somebody out there and i'm not allowed to know  has a gun or likely has a gun and that very nerve makes us very nervous now i want to say this is of this is objective lee reasonable reaction of these professors they aren't wilting violets are hot house plants this is this is rogue reasonable reaction the university president you do with the case then i get your point that they if somebody's about to shoot you when you talk that that's scary i get that here's my question it's you can have a gun in my classroom and it can be loaded any student and i can't know who they are and i can't tell them don't bring i can't say anything about that and that threat is sitting there that dread that threat is sitting there i said we want your lists in double a c p u your membership whether they intended to curtail first amendment rights on that at that point or infringe on the end was not the issue the issue whether the it is whether it did in the dread over in the be alabama side is the same of the same character as the dred here that if you don't know if you're a professor and you're pushing the bay but the you have it done you have a student that's on the edge and that's what i was trying to say though is i know you don't like the polling i know your clients don't like the policy but what's causing the chilling injury is not the policy it's the act of a third party bringing the gun and cons you don't agree on the policy leaves it read for left to deal with that case well and tell us if we are a mind to look at this as the district judge did you know how can we look at it in a more favorable way well the debate surveillance programs layered was an army surveillance program clapper was surveilling of international phone calls to certain types of people and but people were denied standing in each instance there because the court said you've not been surve and you have no indication you're going to be surveilled you have not been so you don't have standing if they had been surveyed they would have had standing in both of those instances so the policy was surveillance these people had not been affected by the policy they were worried they might be here the policy is you have bill that anonymous student sit there with guns in the classroom if they have them and worry about it and so they are directly affected it isn't like some day you may be affected by if but here it's the equivalent of they are being surveilled they being directly at a time affected by the policy i thought there was actual surveillance at laird and the supreme court which is simply saying that that subjective chill was too attenuated to say i don't i don't think that's correct your honor i think they said you have no indication that you've been surveilled here let me go through just elements of the injury in fact which is the key issue here the injury in fact as springboards and spokeo is first and foremost among the three pieces of stand you have injury in fact you have traceable to the conduct which is some of what judge who was questioning about and then you have redress ability i don't think there's any question about redress ability so i want but i want to focus on the injury in fact which is first and foremost among these first it has the injury has to be concrete but concrete does not mean you can feel the professors do not have to have had a gun waved in their face or see a gun waved in the face of one of their students or be shot to make this claim intangible intangible harms or acceptable and it only takes an identifiable trifle under those rulings intangible harm clapper it's not likely or versus state and those are you might in the future have to be subjected to the surveillance program we're currently being subjected to the policy we're challenging in the be layered instead as a court went through it the final step though was that it was an action of a third party which seems to me in the supreme court's view was a independent bases for saying why there was not an injury i don't evidence there's ever been third party surveillance of you in surveillance with a challenge policy here i say the policy is saying you can't keep guns out of your classroom is the challenge policy it isn't being shot that's not the challenge policy the challenge policy is i can't say keep guns out of my classroom and that's not an undifferentiated fear it's specific as to these plaintiffs they only are starting this as to themselves when you come back could you point out what part of layered draws a distinction because i'm reading there right now just refresh my recollection it's about an active policy of collecting information by going to events just briefly the policy didn't affect the plaintiffs that's the thing are the plaintiffs in the layered were not affected by the policy they were worried that some day they might be subjected to this surveillance in the courts that you've never been subjected to the surveillance so these people that's what i keep saying the surveillance here they are is equivalent to the policy here they are if people had been subjected to the surveillance they could have had stand that's all there for that stand not make their cla please the court case in the fine for apple e s i like to start kind of where the where the court just left off and that's what clapper and i could point the court to page four sixteen of clabbered and it says that the second circuit's analysis improperly allowed respondents to establish standing by asserting that they suffer present burdens that are based on a fear of surveillance so long as that fear is not fanciful paranoid or otherwise unreasonable this improperly waters down the fundamental requirements of article three that is this case plaintiff's plaintiffs self imposed harm based on a fear of what's going to happen and they say well it's it's an objective here clapper says that's not enough clapper goes on it says respondents contention that they have standing because they incurred certain cost as a reasonable reaction to a risk of harm is unavailing because the harm respondents seek to avoid is not certainly impending in other words respondents cannot manufacture standing made some somewhat qualified statements it seems to me in the past we have been reluctant to endorse standing theories we'd love to endorse him that require guesswork now independent decision makers will act and i didn't say we decline to abandon that on speculation there's an awful lot in your brief i don't think the district judge opinion that lengthy i don't think he talked about it that really talk about the speculative nature of this does it ever become non shootings change the analysis does it become a some stage less speculative does it have to happen at the university of texas austin campus by somebody who did have a proper permit just how does this play out in the future if we say you ha analysis now well for that your honor i would point this court to city of l a the lions because they're they're the plaintiff was previously subject to a choke hold by l a police and he came to court to challenge their chuckled and the court said you don't have standing because because you are not because it speculative whether or not you're going to be subject to a chokehold again it wasn't enough that he had already been subject to one and the court said that this is what you would have to do to have standing said lions would not have had to only allege that he would have had another encounter with police but also to make the incredible assertion that all police officers in los angeles always choke any citizen within they happen to encounter whatever the purpose of of the arrest that's what they would have to allege here they'd have to lodge a possible facts that in fact they will be shot and even then and even then your honor that would still be lawbreaking by you by a third party so we we haven't even gotten to the third party thing that's i guess you would have in the next question seems to me regardless of the speculative nature of it in the morse that there's less speculative nature of it perhaps as events go along you still have this independent actor issue and what i read out of energy international she just the supreme court has necessarily closed the door but it is not yet recognize the actions of third parties as being able to create a standing on the part of the person who fears that person's actions that unidentified person's actions so you think there is almost automatically or o a requirement that if the chilling effect is from the possible action of third parties there cannot be standing by your honor i i will not i will say that in some case if it were guaranteed that that the government action would directly cause the third party than start over i lost you if it were guaranteed that a puppet government policy which would definitely lead to a third party then then maybe but but the court has never endorsed that what about meese versus kean the propaganda political propaganda notice that had to be given if you showed certain end the only way that matters is if other people see if other people care about your reputation but it wasn't those people causing his reputation to be harmed it was the government's label of him as a propagandist that was causing the harm it it  went in one direction not not the other direction so even though third parties were necessary but for that harm to mean anything it was still the government was not harm without a third party its right right but that doesn't mean that they're causing it your honor it was it was the government that was causing it it was going in one one direction it was not the people out there the constituents that were causing the harm and said what you would say about the membership rolls of double a c p in the alabama case or how would you deal as well as with as you pointed out your honor that was not a that was not a standing case it was an organizational standing case the court at the court did not did not analyze why what the actions of third parties meant in that case but even in that case what the court said was there was such a history of this that it was inevitable is what the court used that it would happen again here i mean even if you take their objective leave reasonable standard they can't satisf because all they have all they've alleges lots of people have this fear but lots of people fear flying that doesn't mean that it's reasonable to think that any plane is going to crash so the fact that multiple multiple people have this fear the fact that this is never there's never there's never been a shooting on in a college that that allows campus carry based on a robust academic debate so even if you accept that that part of their theory or it it can't work they can exercise their full panoply of their asserted first amendment right without risk of violating the campus carry law and policy if they if they power through their self imposed censorship and engage in robust debate there is no threat that the campus carry law and policy will impose discipline on them you know that's not the threat they're worried about it's not it's not you're on a boat but when you're challenging a law then that's where the threat has to  with the statute and so the problem really isn't the policy it's the statute is that a fair reading well if your honor the the attorney general's opinion is is persuasive in s justification was not that the statute required it was that the alternative was having gun lockers outside every classroom and that that was too too dangerous and so that that was understanding and that is that this is why actually three the first is that in in no case in this court or in the supreme court has a chill on speech without any certainly impending harm been found to satisfy article three and if we if we can look at then judge please opinion for for the d c circuit in united presbyterian church the reagan ex surveyed the supreme court case law and i concluded that chill is what implicates the first amendment it is not by itself up enough to satisfy article three but you have to have in order to satisfy article three a certainly impending harm and then even if you took plaintiff's chill as as an injury they would still have a traceability problem because it depends on the acts of third parties and then finally even if they could satisfy those two they have a redress ability requirement because they're genuine fear is based on law breaking and it is not it is not likely that allowing them to institute a rule in their classroom could correct a factual misstatement by bob by my friend he he refers to this as if these classrooms belong to plaintiffs they don't they belong to the to the institution when we're asking for is the professors who want the government to step in and help them prevent students from coming in with with a gun right and the the irony is that they cite academic freedom for this whereas this court has cited academic freedom as a reason that courts do not get involved in a university court stated in the minnesota community college case be night policy is a matter for the institution it is not there is no right for academics to be involved in institutional policy and so even if this court order were to reach the merits of plaintiffs the first amendment claim it would have to reject the claim because their constitutional theory has has no merit not not only based on night but also in the university of pennsylvania c in which the court held that even assuming that there is a right to academic freedom it governs only content there just as here the plaintiffs alleged that the government policy was infringing their right to have a robust exchange of ideas ideas in the supreme court was clear and said there is no right to that and so what what the university of pennsylvania of e e o c stands for is that academic freedom to the extent it exists at all does not exempt individual professors from generally the pluggable laws and regulations such as the campus carry law and policy really when everything is sorted out here it comes down to the fact that these professors are not happy with what they perceive to be the situation in the classrooms at the university of texas arising from th campus kerry pouncey so it's sort of comes down to the next good offer from yale or two lane just take it i mean doesn't that really it isn't they have sort of went where you're left as in as  those policies is exactly what this court has said it does not want to get involved in and then if i could if i could break briefly talk about the second amendment and equal protection claims the second ame claim claims a broad based right to self defense that entitles plaintiffs to a certain level of regulation of gun gun possession in in the state text and places rely on the  says what he says about traceability and then dismisses never deals with these other issues were they not you know maybe not central to the essential to the case you re interpretation that what he hailed actually deals with the other issues or where they would you know just how did this play out in the district court that the opinion was prepared this way if you have any explanation you know i don't have any specific explanation as the paxton motion to dismiss was purely merits and the u t motion to dismiss was merits and jurisdiction and in the in the opinion the court says he's granting both motions and and he goes on to dismiss all of all claims and so you know there are there are but he only talks specifically about first amendment standing so there are there are conflicting signs there but ultimately federal rule fifty two i believe it is does not require findings of fact or conclusions of law in the in the granting of the twelve emotion and so that's no basis to to reverse the court and in any event it's been over review so no matter what the just reports this court would have to look at the complaint and see if if plaintiffs have alleged a claim which they have not and i ask one question of course the does this policy also cover for example let's say the university law school and vite say extremely controversial national figure to come deliver one of their addresses at the law school  yeah and there are there are there are other things so in any event where there's going to be young young children for example no no guns are allowed so there are various things that could could play play into that the ultimate goal to make goal of this was was to look at where students who have the privilege to carry where they spend most of their time because if they're if they're prevented from carrying guns when they spend most of their time in the not much left to do their privilege and so that's why classrooms are are are such a focus here because that's the main point of going to school and that's where student most of their time and that kind of dovetails with with the equal protection argument which is that there are good rational reasons for each step in this policy plaintiff's own only response is that we should be able to to prove that these things aren't rational but as in any other case you have to allege facts before you get to to discover evidence and bring it into court and pla not alleged any facts that if true would undermine the rationality of the campus carry law and and policy and so for that reason that claim must fail as well and with that i will return my time in law school and a professor who did not allow students to bring in laptops if a student had one hadn't brought that laptop i'm sure the professor should sue the student not the are largely in charge of what goes on in the classroom and so i don't think this is a situation of these people being high handed and saying we're special giving standing to somebody to sue the government because the government hasn't protected you against a third party it seems to me that's basically what you're saying no you can't do that because that situation we aren't they aren't asking for government protection they're asking for self protection they're saying we should have the option it's the opposite of the government protecting him is the government not allowing them to protect themselves their professor is in there saying we want to exclude guns from our classroom not other people's classrooms ours and the government has said we won't let you have to let a gut loaded gun in your honor that's why every texas has concealed carry state wide does any texan have the standing to sue the government for not preventing people from carrying concealed throughout the night at large but these people teach they have factual allegations supported by university president the faculty council and others problem for me it's a first amendment problem for the professors because they will protect their place of activities protected by the first minute i want to go to king's without of that you can make a point about the state wide policy i want to go to a park and express my views about a particular political matter but you're letting people carry guns not just in universities but across the entire state i don't want guns there so do stead of suing the person bringing a gun i'm going to sue the state you're in undifferentiated part of the hole here you  we're only asking for standing to understand barkha but it's natural for us to be worried about the natural logic of your life and i don't think that that's the logic carries that for you and why not because it has to be a specific situation where somebody has to support and ask you objective lee reasonable and i think i've given you one i think i think i'm not wrong with your time but i've given you a specific situation i want to speak on a park i fear that because the state allows concealed carry state wide somebody's going to bring a gun and show my ability to speak i think you just have to brace the principle that you have standing there to under your theory i just don't know honestly your your honor i don't think it's a situation like judge king was saying and i can love it or leave it if you don't like the policy go somewhere else because we don't have a rule in this country that says if your first amendment rights are being impinged upon just leave and go somewhere where they aren't you and we may be moving in that direction that's true they are and that's true i understand you're o show you asked about under about a layered i didn't have time to read the whole opinion but i can say this nice which just southwick mentioned is the case this specifically distinguishes what i think is our situation from the situation later you said there where they didn't have sandy and layered it was undifferentiated bystanders with claims indistinguishable from those of the general public these people are not the general public also in layered what the what the court said have they had the mere existence without more of a governmental surveillance policy here we have more to die do you want to give me one minute can say your time's up i'm to give you one more minutes with the st concerns are not and undifferentiated they're specific to these people but they're also objective lee reasonable based on everything that's going on that we seeing out there in history is fresh in this regard thank you our counsel and thank you both an important ca