Freedom of speech for professors and freedom from belligerent student demands won a small victory last week with the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Meriwhether v. Shawnee State University.
In brief, here are the facts: Philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwhether replied to a student in class, “Yes, sir.” The student, however, was unhappy with that form of address. He’s transgender and informed Meriwhether that in the future, he wanted to be referred to with feminine forms of address and pronouns. Meriwhether balked at that, so the student filed a complaint against him. Shawnee State officials did just what you’d expect — they demanded that Meriwhether comply or else face unspecified punishment. Meriwhether said that he’d be glad to refer to the student just using first or last name, but of course that wasn’t good enough. The school demanded compliance with the student’s directives.
So, with legal assistance from Alliance Defending Freedom, Meriwhether filed suit in federal court, arguing that the university was trampling on his First Amendment rights. The district court dismissed his complaint, but the Sixth Circuit reversed it. You can read all about the case here.
A key quotation from the opinion: “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.”
Shawnee State could petition for rehearing en banc by the Sixth Circuit or it could continue fighting the case on remand. Or it could just stop trying to appease aggressive “woke” students by threatening professors who want to teach in their own way. The former would run up more legal expenses Shawnee State can ill afford, while the latter would tarnish the administrators’ “progressive” credentials.
I’ll write about the case again once Shawnee has decided.