A professor at Shawnee State University (SSU) said to a transgender, a biologically male student who identified as a female, that he wouldn’t use the student’s preferred pronounces because of his religious beliefs.
According to Alliance Defending Freedom, the trans student “became aggressive, circling around him, getting in his face in a threatening fashion, while telling him, ‘Then I guess this means I can call you a c**t’.”
The student also threatened the Christian professor’s job and filed a formal complaint with university officials.
After SSU sided with the student, the professor, Nicholas Meriwether, decided to sue with the help of ADF, according to The Federalist’s Chad Felix Greene.
Meriwether’s lawsuit said: “Shawnee State officials have also ignored the Constitution, which guarantees the right of all Americans to speak freely.”
The court then dismissed the professor’s suit and claimed he did not prove he had been discriminated over his religious beliefs.point 353 |
It ruled: “Plaintiff’s refusal to address a student in class in accordance with the student’s gender identity does not implicate broader societal concerns and the free speech clause of the First Amendment under the circumstances of this case.point 211 |
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The professor tried to compromise and said he called his students by either ‘Ms.’ Or ‘Mr.’ and their last name. But the court said that this was still discrimination and the professor should call students by their last name.
Meriwether then refused so the court concluded that he hadn’t been forced to express a view. The professor disagreed and said titles and pronouns are not the same as expressing a belief.
The court then rejected Meriwether’s objections and said the reasonable-person standard wouldn’t consider using preferred pronouns as unreasonable. In addition, the court upheld SSU’s position that it couldn’t accommodate Meriwether because of his religious objection.
It was then determined Meriwether faced no form of discrimination for his religious beliefs after the professor’s superior laughed at his problems during their meeting.
Greene of The Federalist also argued that the court’s reasoning was not reasonable when they “assumed approving of a false gender identity to be a common and reasonable standard of conduct for public employees.”
He also added that this was “an imposed view rather than an objective observation of current social standards.”
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