By Brittany Bernstein
Sunday, April 17, 2022
Shawnee State University in Ohio has reached a settlement
with a professor whom it punished for refusing to use a transgender student’s
preferred pronouns, according to a new report.
The university will pay philosophy professor Nick
Meriwether $400,000 in damages and attorney fees and will rescind a written
warning it issued to Meriwether in June 2018 in response to a biological male
student’s complaint that the professor refused to use female pronouns for the
student, Fox
News reported.
The controversy began in January 18 when Meriwether
responded to the student’s question during a political philosophy class by
saying, “Yes, sir.” After class, the student told the professor that the
student is transgender and asked to be referred to as a woman going forward,
including with “feminine titles and pronouns,” according
to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Meriwether in
court.
The professor argued that obliging the student’s requests
would violate his own convictions as a Christian. When the professor declined
to use female pronouns, the student became belligerent and told Meriwether he
would be fired, according to court documents cited by Fox News.
The student then filed a complaint with Shawnee State,
which opened an investigation into the incident. The university found that the
professor “effectively created a hostile environment” for the student by not
using the preferred pronouns. Meriwether offered to call the student by any
name requested, however. The student did not accept the professor’s offer,
according to the report.
The university placed a written warning in the
professor’s personnel file warning that “further corrective actions” could be
taken if a similar incident occurred.
Meriwether then sued the university, arguing that it
violated his “right to free exercise of religion under the First
Amendment.”
The settlement comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the 6th Circuit reversed a district court’s dismissal of the lawsuit in March
2021, allowing the professor’s lawsuit to move forward.
ADF announced last week that it reached a settlement with
the university.
“Public universities should welcome intellectual and
ideological diversity, where all students and professors can engage in
meaningful discussions without compromising their core beliefs,” said ADF
Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, director of the ADF Center for Academic
Freedom. “Dr. Meriwether rightly defended his freedom to speak and stay silent,
and not conform to the university’s demand for uniformity of thought. We
commend the university for ultimately agreeing to do the right thing, in
keeping with its reason for existence as a marketplace of ideas.”
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