The Wisconsin Supreme Court held on Friday that Marquette University violated Professor John McAdams’ contractual right to academic freedom when it suspended the tenured faculty member for penning a blog post critical of another instructor.

McAdams’ post detailed an exchange between an undergraduate and the student’s philosophy instructor, Cheryl Abbate. After class, the student challenged a comment Abbate made during her lecture that “everybody agrees” on “gay rights” and therefore there was no need to discuss the issue. The student suggested that topic should not be off-limits. Abbate responded that a homosexual student would take offense if a student opposed gay marriage and that “[i]n this class, homophobic comments, racist comments, will not be tolerated.”