The University of Oklahoma, which expelled two Sigma Alpha Epsilon members Tuesday for leading a racist chant, may have infringed on the students right to free speech, some legal experts said.

Two unidentified students were expelled Tuesday forplaying a "leadership role" in a racist chant by SAE brothers at theUniversity of Oklahoma, the university's president announced, following his orders Monday to ban the fraternity from campus and evict the members from the house.

"We will continue our investigation of all the students engaged in the singing of this chant," University President David Boren said in a statement, justifying the expulsionson the grounds that the chant had created a hostile environment for other students. "Once their identities have been confirmed, they will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action."

But at least two legal experts say the fraternitys racist song, although offensive, may be protected by the 1st Amendment.

The irony here is that [Boren is] arguing hes protecting the rights of some students while infringing on the 1st Amendment rights of other students, said Joey Senat, an associate professor who teaches media law at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. The speech is offensive, the speech is abhorrent, but the 1st Amendment protects unpopular speech.

Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, agreed. Racist speech is constitutionally protected, just as is expression of other contemptible ideas; and universities may not discipline students based on their speech, Volokh wrote in the Washington Post.That has been the unanimous view of courts that have considered campus speech codes and other campus speech restrictions.

Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a student legal advocacy group based in Philadelphia, called the comments "a plain, vanilla case of protected speech.

I think the university president is betting on the fact that the public won't care because of its distaste for racism, Cohn told The Los Angeles Times.

The expulsionswere the latest fallout from a viral video that emerged Sunday night showing members of the SAE fraternity singing an anti-black chant.

Boren almost immediately banned the SAE fraternity from campus after the video showed members singing "you can hang 'em from a tree" and"there will never be a [n-word] SAE" on a bus.

The rest is here:

University of Oklahoma expulsions may be speech infringement, experts say