Lawyer: Professor had right to call trans student 'sir.' $400k settlement big wake-up call
Tyson Langhofer is senior counsel and director of the Center for Academic Freedom at Alliance Defending Freedom. The conservative Christian legal advocacy group represented Nicholas Meriwether in his case against Shawnee State University. @ADFLegal
“What’s the big deal? It’s just a pronoun.”
This was the typical response Professor Nicholas Meriwether received when he initially voiced his objections to his university’s policy of forcing professors to refer to students with a title or pronoun different than the students’ biological sex.
But as a professor of philosophy, religion, and ethics, Meriwether knows words matter because they communicate ideas. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. And now, thanks to a recent court victory, he can continue to teach the next generation of students how to recognize the difference between ideas that promote human flourishing and those that harm it.
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Meriwether has been a professor at Shawnee State University for more than 25 years. In January 2018, during a class, he responded to a student’s question by saying, “Yes, sir.”
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After class, the student demanded to be referred to as a woman, with feminine titles and pronouns. When Meriwether didn’t instantly agree, the student became angry and promised to get him fired.
Meriwether offered to use the student’s preferred first or last name only and avoid pronouns. But ultimately, university officials rejected any compromise that would allow him to speak according to his conscience.
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Although the student completed the class and received a good grade, the university disciplined Meriwether. They placed a warning in his personnel file and threatened “further corrective actions” unless he articulated the university’s ideological message.
Meriwether filed suit through his attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom, arguing that the university’s policy and its disciplinary action against him violated his First Amendment rights of free speech and free exercise of religion.
He recognized that this isn’t just about a pronoun; it’s about what that pronoun means. It’s about affirming an ideology.
He also understood what many others don’t. An ideology that would force a professor to use certain words would not stop there.
It would demand total conformity until it suppressed all dissent.
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In the four years since, radical gender identity ideology has become predominant in universities, K-12 public schools, Big Tech, corporations, and mainstream media.
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Many who dare question the tenets of this ideology are summarily canceled.
Thankfully, Meriwether’s case demonstrates that if those affected by these policies take a stand, they can win. After the district court dismissed his claims, the 6th Circuit ruled in his favor.
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As that court held, “Traditionally, American universities have been beacons of intellectual diversity and academic freedom. They have prided themselves on being forums where controversial ideas are discussed and debated. And they have tried not to stifle debate by picking sides.
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"But Shawnee State chose a different route: It 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 court explained that if “professors lacked free-speech protections when teaching, a university would wield alarming power to compel ideological conformity. 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.”
Indeed.
As part of the settlement following that decision, the university agreed that it cannot compel Meriwether to speak messages he disagrees with and paid $400,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees.
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Let’s hope that Meriwether’s victory serves as a wake-up call to institutions of higher education throughout the country and to other institutions pushing this ideology. The answer to speech we disagree with isn’t censorship, it’s more speech.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Opinion: What Shawnee State professor may mean for preferred pronoun use
