CINCINNATI (Legal Newsline) – The professor who was disciplined for not using a transgender student's preferred feminine pronoun and the university that issued the warning letter have made their arguments to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Shawnee State University, which was successful in defending its actions at the trial court level, filed its brief with the Sixth Circuit on Aug. 17, nearly three months after appellant Nicholas Meriwether filed his.
“Because he desired to adhere to his conscience while showing courtesy to the student, he offered to use the student’s preferred name and avoid using titles and pronouns entirely with this student,” Meriwether’s lawyers wrote.
“That way, Dr. Meriwether could honor the student’s wishes without saying things that contradicted Dr. Meriwether’s philosophical and religious beliefs. But University officials rejected that accommodation and punished him for violating their non-discrimination policies.
“They gave him no way to speak without endorsing philosophies that he believes are false and violate his religious beliefs.”
District Judge Susan J. Dlott decided that the philosophy professor failed to state a claim for violation of his rights under the U.S. Constitution.
“His speech, the manner by which he addressed a transgender student, was not protected under the First Amendment,” wrote Judge Dlott in her Feb. 12 opinion.
“Further, he [Meriwether] did not plead facts sufficient to state a claim for a violation of his rights to free exercise of religion for a departure from religious neutrality,” Dlott stated in her decision.
Dlott's decision is dangerous, according to Dr. Meriwether's attorney Travis Barham, because it eliminates the free speech rights of all professors by saying that the First Amendment does not protect anything professors say in their professional roles.
The case has drawn interest from several groups that have filed amicus briefs. Shawnee State’s brief says Meriwether and the groups supporting him want the case to be a “judicial referendum on the propriety of gender-identity nondiscrimination policies.”
“A University can, indeed has an obligation to, protect its students from discrimination,” Shawnee State’s brief continues.
“Because Shawnee State permissibly added a warning letter to Meriwether’s employment file instructing him to discontinue his discriminatory behavior, this Court should affirm the district court’s judgment dismissing the legally non-cognizable and/or implausible allegations Meriwether set forth in his complaint.”
The university said it has the authority to discipline faculty for refusing to use a student’s requested name or pronoun. It relayed that authority to Meriwether in 2016.
In January 2018, the student in question asked Meriwether something. Meriwether replied, “Yes sir.”
After class, the student told Meriwether that she identifies as female.
“When Dr. Meriwether paused to think about this, Doe became belligerent, berating Dr. Meriwether and announcing, ‘Then I guess this means I can call you a cunt.’ Promising to get Dr. Meriwether filed, the student filed a complaint,” Meriwether’s brief says.
Meriwether decided to call the student by using her preferred first or last name rather than pronouns. He claims university officials approved at first, until the student took exception.
“So the officials recanted and insisted that Dr. Meriwether use individually preferred pronouns and titles for every student or purge them from his vocabulary completely,” his brief says.