From the ACLU, this is at Liberty, a podcast about the civil rights and civil liberties questions of our time.

I'm Molly Kaplan, your host for this episode.

Sports has long been an arena where civil rights and civil liberties questions have taken center stage.

Track and field star Tommy Smith raised his fist for racial justice on the 1968 Olympic podium.

Tennis great, Billy Jean King, fought for equal pay for women.

An Olympic runner, Castor Samana, challenged intersex bigotry to be able to compete.

But one group of athletes is often kept quiet during social movements, college athletes, largely

because the institutions they play for silence them. At a time when racial justice conversations

have ignited across the country, we're taking a look at how universities silenced their

athletes and the barriers to holding those universities accountable. Joining us to talk about college athletes in free speech is Frank Lamonti,

First Amendment lawyer, and director of the Breckner Center for Freedom of Information

at the University of Florida.

Frank, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for the opportunity.

Since the George Floyd protest started in May, college sports has seen a kind of

shift. Student athletes are speaking on racism at their school, and they're speaking sometimes in

defiance of their universities' ban on free speech. Why is this an exceptional moment? How is it

different from previous moments? Yeah, it's really remarkable.

I think you're seeing the confluence of two societal factors that are of specific relevance and

salience to the young people in that college athlete cohort. You mentioned the big one, the George Floyd,

Black Lives Matter movement,

but combine that with COVID-19 and the really urgent personal concern that people have for their

...