Professors at the University of Alabama and students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham filed a federal lawsuit today challenging a new Alabama law that they described as a censorship bill that prevents them from learning, teaching, and engaging in classes and programs on diverse viewpoints and topics.

The Alabama State Conference of the NAACP is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit announced today by the ACLU of Alabama.

The lawsuit challenges a new Alabama law that banned diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in public colleges, local school boards, and state agencies.

The law also placed restrictions on the teaching of what it defines as “divisive concepts.”

Republicans who hold the majority in the Alabama Legislature passed the bill, SB 129, over the opposition of Democrats last year.

Read more: Alabama’s anti-DEI law kicks in: College offices close, websites scrubbed

The lawsuit claims the three UA professors who are plaintiffs “have either specifically received threats of discipline from university administrators for alleged noncompliance with SB 129 if they do not alter their curriculum to avoid certain viewpoints and/or fear that they will be accused of violating SB 129 if they do not alter their curriculum to excise certain viewpoints.

“They have cancelled class projects, changed curriculum, and elected not to teach certain classes as a result of SB 129.”

The lawsuit claims the three UAB students who are plaintiffs have suffered harm outside the classroom “because student organizations to which they belong have lost on-campus office spaces and/or university funding due to their purported viewpoint or their purported inclusion in the Legislature’s definition of DEI in violation of SB 129.”

“Inside of the classroom, Student Plaintiffs have well-founded concerns that they will not receive a robust and comprehensive education because SB 129 censors professors’ viewpoints disfavored by the Legislature,” the lawsuit says.

The plaintiffs claim the new law violates the 1st Amendment and the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“SB 129 attempts to evade classroom discussions about racial discrimination and oppression, and undermine support for student groups and university offices and programs that were created to address unfair disadvantages experienced by Black students due to ongoing racial discrimination and/or the effects of racial discrimination,” the lawsuit says.

“Thus, the Alabama Legislature passed and enacted SB 129 with the intent to discriminate against Black people — the known beneficiaries of academic scholarship, university programs, and student activities aimed to address the ongoing effects of racial discrimination in the United States.”

The law took effect Oct. 1 and has led to the closing of DEI offices on university campuses.

Gov. Kay Ivey, when she signed the bill into law in August, issued a statement:

“My Administration has and will continue to value Alabama’s rich diversity, however, I refuse to allow a few bad actors on college campuses – or wherever else for that matter – to go under the acronym of DEI, using taxpayer funds, to push their liberal political movement counter to what the majority of Alabamians believe.“