Preferred pronouns – Professor wins First Amendment case

An Ohio college professor who resisted his school’s orders to go along with transgender students’ preferred pronouns has won his First Amendment case before a federal appeals court. The ruling clears the way for the professor to pursue a lawsuit seeking damages, writes Mary Kay Linge for the New York Post.

In a unanimous ruling, the sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals said that Shawnee State University violated Professor Nicholas Meriwether’s rights of free speech and free exercise of religion by punishing him for resisting school rules that forced him to address students in the terms of their choosing.

Meriwether, a philosophy professor and devout Christian, sued Shawnee State, claiming that its mandate to use terms that conflict with biology infringed on his religious belief that gender is fixed from the moment of conception. The court’s decision, written by a judge appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump and issued Friday 26 March, upheld Meriwether’s argument. “The First Amendment interests are especially strong here because Meriwether’s speech also relates to his core religious and philosophical beliefs,” Judge Amul Thapar wrote in a 32-page decision.
Full report on the New York Post site