A federal appeals court on March 26 reversed a lower court decision, ruling that an Ohio professor’s First Amendment rights may have been violated when his university tried forcing him to refer to a biological male student using female pronouns.
A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether “has plausibly alleged that Shawnee State violated his First Amendment rights by compelling his speech or silence and casting a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”
Shawnee State University, in Ohio, has employed Meriwether for 25 years.
The case centers around a 2016 rule change that requires faculty to refer to students by their “preferred pronoun[s].”
When Meriwether, a Christian, sought clarification on the rule, a university official claimed that Christians are “primarily motivated out of fear” and should be “banned from teaching courses regarding that religion.” She also said she thought even the “presence of religion in higher education is counterproductive.”
Two years later, on the first day of his class, Meriwether was using the Socratic method to lead a discussion and addressed, as he normally does, students using gender references like “Mr.” He called one person “sir,” not knowing the biological male identifies as a female.
After class, the individual approached Meriwether and demanded the professor refer to him as a she and use feminine titles and pronouns. Meriwether said he wasn’t sure he could and was threatened in response, according to court filings.
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