Noah Feldman, Columnist

University Tax Flunks the First Amendment Test

The levy on investment income overwhelmingly targets liberal institutions. The key to overturning it will be convincing the courts.

January 11, 2018 at 8:09 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

How about a sweatshirt tax?
Photographer: Michael Fein/Bloomberg

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The new federal tax on the investment income of universities with endowments of more than $500,000 per student is terrible policy, raising minimal revenue while imposing costs on financial aid.

But it’s also something much worse: To the extent it targets institutions whose faculties skew liberal, the law violates the First Amendment.