Court Rules Shawnee State University Violated Professor’s 1st Amendment Rights by Ordering Him to Use Students’ Preferred Pronouns
The Sixth Circuit federal appeals court has unanimously ruled that Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio, violated a professor’s First Amendment rights by ordering him to use students’ preferred pronouns.
Shawnee State University, a public school in Ohio, violated a Christian professor’s constitutional rights by punishing him for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns, ruled the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday.
In a unanimous opinion written by Judge Amul Thapar, the court said Shawnee State “punished a professor for his speech on a hotly contested issue. And it did so despite the constitutional protections afforded by the First Amendment.”
The Cincinnati-based appeals court also compared the university’s behavior to the “McCarthy era,” in which government instituted a loyalty program “to eliminate ‘subversive persons’ among government personnel.”
In 2018, professor Nicholas Meriwether — a “devout Christian” who has been a fixture at the university for 25 years — called a biological male student “sir” during class. The professor said at the time, he was not aware his student preferred female pronouns.
The court’s opinion explained that after class, the student approached Meriwether and “demanded” that he refer to him “as a woman,” and use “feminine titles and pronouns.”
This was the first time Meriwether learned that the student identified as a woman, the court says, adding that “Meriwether paused before responding because his sincerely held religious beliefs prevented him from communicating messages about gender identity that he believes are false.”
“He explained that he wasn’t sure if he could comply with [the student’s] demands,” the court adds. “[The student] became hostile — circling around Meriwether at first, and then approaching him in a threatening manner: ‘I guess this means I can call you a [cunt].”
The student then promised he would get Meriwether fired if he did not give in to his demands.
Shawnee State’s Acting Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Roberta Milliken, later ordered the professor to begin using female pronouns when addressing the student — rather than just using his last name — or else risk violating the university’s policy.
“Soon after, Meriwether accidentally referred to Doe using the title ‘Mr.’ before immediately correcting himself,” Thapar writes, adding that the student “again complained to the university’s Title IX Coordinator and threatened to retain counsel if the university didn’t take action.”
In an attempt to find common ground, Meriwether suggested that he use student’s preferred pronouns, as long as the university allows him to put a disclaimer in his syllabus “noting that he was doing so under compulsion and setting forth his personal and religious beliefs about gender identity.”
Dean Milliken rejected the professor’s suggestion, and in a bizarre move, insisted that putting a disclaimer in the syllabus would in itself violate the university’s gender identity policy.
So Meriwether continued addressing the student by his last name.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/29/court-rules-shawnee-state-university-violated-professors-1st-amendment-rights-by-ordering-him-to-use-students-preferred-pronouns/