A federal appeals court on Friday unanimously ruled in favor of a professor who refused to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit found that Shawnee State University in southern Ohio violated the First Amendment’s free speech and free exercise clauses by punishing Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor, for using a transgender student’s biological pronouns. The ruling reversed a previous district court decision dismissing Meriwether’s claims.
In the majority opinion, Judge Amul Thapar wrote that while transgender issues are “hotly contested,” the school had trampled on Meriwether’s free speech rights by not allowing him reasonable freedom in how he addresses his students.
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“If professors lacked free-speech protections when teaching, a university would wield alarming power to compel ideological conformity,” Thapar wrote. “A university president could require a pacifist to declare that war is just, a civil rights icon to condemn the Freedom Riders, a believer to deny the existence of God, or a Soviet émigré to address his students as ‘comrades.’ That cannot be.”
The case arose after Meriwether, a Christian, in 2018 referred to a biologically male student with “sir.” The student identified as female at the time, a fact that was impressed upon Meriwether soon after he began teaching. As a compromise, Meriwether and faculty agreed that he would use only the transgender student’s last name in class while still calling on other students with gendered pronouns.
That compromise soon broke down, and Meriwether brought the case forward in late 2018.
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John Bursch, a senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, the group defending Meriwether, said after the decision that free speech cases of this sort have become more common as transgender questions continue to swirl through the public sphere.
“The freedoms of speech and religion must be vigorously protected if universities are to remain places where ideas can be debated and learning can take place,” he said.
