Canceled on Campus: Maggie DeJong’s Story

Maggie DeJong became a victim of “cancel culture” at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville after she shared her beliefs online and in class.

Maggie’s beliefs on topics like religion, politics, critical race theory, and COVID-19 differed from many of her classmates. Instead of engaging in meaningful discussions about these topics, some of Maggie’s classmates said her speech was “harmful” and constituted “harassment” and “microaggressions.”

After some students reported Maggie to SIUE officials simply because she shared her beliefs, the school issued three no-contact orders against her, prohibiting her from having “any contact” or even “indirect communication” with three of her fellow art therapy graduate students. Officials were not able to tell her a single law, policy, or rule she had violated—because she hadn’t violated any.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a lawsuit on Maggie’s behalf, and after a favorable ruling from a federal district court, SIUE agreed to settle the case. As part of the settlement, SIUE agreed to revise its policies to protect free speech and require the professors who violated Maggie’s rights to undergo First Amendment training.

Learn more by watching the video below.

JPMorgan Chase Changes Policy That Led to Politicized Debanking of Conservatives

On Tuesday Reuters reported that JPMorgan Chase changed a policy that had contributed to politicized debanking of conservative organizations.

Family Council has written repeatedly about how politicized debanking by JPMorgan Chase and others has hurt charities and people of faith.

In 2021, our credit card processor, WePay — a company owned by JPMorgan Chase — canceled our account with virtually no notice and no explanation. We eventually learned WePay had designated us a “high risk” client.

The only conclusion we could draw was that our conservative principles prompted the cancelation.

Reuters reports that JPMorgan Chase has changed WePay’s policy, writing,

An archived webpage shows that as recently as August, merchants using JPMorgan’s WePay service had to agree to not accept payments or use the service in connection with “social risk issues.” The bank defined those as “subject to allegation and impacts related to hate groups, systemic racism, sexual harassment and corporate culture.”

That language no longer appears on the WePay terms of service

This language about “social risk issues” and “hate groups” likely could have been used by WePay to debank legitimate, conservative groups.

Corporate shareholders, state attorneys general, congressmen, and news outlets all have expressed concerns over conservatives being wrongly labeled as “high risk” or “hate groups” and subsequently debanked as a result of policies like this one. This policy change by JPMorgan’s WePay is a remarkable step forward.

Banks that are too big to fail should also be too big to discriminate. Nobody should have their bank account closed for what they believe.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.