UH System Under FIRE | Free Speech Under Attack

Since we published "Free Speech Groundhog Day," the situation has escalated, drawing national attention. On July 8, 2026, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) took up Martin’s case. FIRE is the country's leading campus free speech watchdog. They wrote to Hawaiʻi Community College administrators and called on them to rescind the trespass warning against Libertarian Party of Hawaii and Young Americans for Liberty Chairman Austin Martin immediately.

Petitioning

Over the spring of 2026, Martin visited the Hilo campus to gather signatures for a petition asking the University of Hawaiʻi system to let students carry pepper spray for self-defense. Campus security removed him three separate times across March and April, then handed him a one-year trespass warning. They then doubled down by sending an email to all students telling them to keep an eye out for Martin and report any sightings of him on campuses. FIRE describes it as resting on an “erroneous and unconstitutional reading of the university system's solicitation policy”. The same conclusion we reached is now being stated by the nation's foremost authority on campus speech.

The campus involved is Hawaiʻi Community College, which shares their location with UH Hilo, both under the UH system. The trespass warning came from that college's security. The underlying policy is systemwide, which is exactly why this keeps happening at more than one campus.

UH System Policy Rewrite

This all unfolded while the UH system was in the middle of rewriting its speech rules. In November 2025, UH President Wendy Hensel announced a plan to update the system's Time, Place, and Manner policy, and the drafts have been circulating for months. You can read the university's resource page and the draft Administrative Procedure. It is clear Martin was not violating the rules that were in force when he was banned, and he would not be violating the new rules (though not yet in effect) either.

The rules in force at the time already protected him. EP 10.206, adopted after the university lost the 2014 Burch case, requires campuses to let students approach others and hand out non-commercial literature "such as petitions" in all areas generally open to students. A one-man petition drive for self-defense rights sits neatly inside this protection.

The new draft protects him too. The proposal carries the exact same language forward, and still directs campuses to implement the solicitation rule "in a manner to permit students to approach others on campus and to distribute non-commercial literature such as petitions, circulars, leaflets, newspapers in all areas generally available to students." 

The problem is administrators enforcing a policy that does not exist, against speech that is protected by both the First Amendment and by UH policies. UH lost this fight in 2014. As a result, they wrote a policy promising to protect speech. They are now drafting a new policy that promises the same thing. In the middle of that process, its own security banned a citizen for a year for doing something both versions protect. New rules will not fix a culture that ignores the rules already on the books.

FIRE Speech Code Rating

It's worth understanding how FIRE already views this system. FIRE gives the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (the system's flagship) a "yellow light" speech code rating. FIRE describes the yellow light school tier as one that maintains at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application. The rating is effectively a warning label. It means the written rules are vague enough that an administrator can bend them against speech they do not like, as seen with Austin Martin in Hilo.

UH once held FIRE's red light (the worst rating possible), and only climbed to yellow after being sued in the 2014 Young Americans for Liberty case out of UH Hilo, where students were blocked from handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution because they stood outside a designated "free speech zone." When the university settled and killed the zones systemwide, they earned a yellow grade. More than a decade later the same system is still running on ambiguous language as they run petitioners off campuses.

The Libertarian Party of Hawaii is grateful FIRE has once again stepped in to protect First Amendment rights in Hawaii. We will keep following this case. 

Have your rights been violated by the State of Hawaii? We want to hear about it. Contact us anytime. 

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