After a three-year battle, an Ohio university reached a settlement in favor of a professor who refused to use a student’s pronouns.
Lawyers representing professor Dr. Nick Meriwether announced on April 14 that Shawnee State University, about 100 miles east of Cincinnati, settled the case regarding the professor’s right to choose which pronouns to use when referring to students, according to an April 14 news release from the ADF Center for Academic Freedom.
As part of the lawsuit settlement, the university will pay Meriwether $400,000 in damages and cover the professor’s attorneys’ fees. The university is also rescinding a written warning issued in 2018, according to the release.
“Though we have decided to settle, we adamantly deny that anyone at Shawnee State deprived Dr. Meriwether of his free speech rights or his rights to freely exercise his religion,” a Shawnee State University spokesperson told McClatchy News in a statement.
Professor declined to use female pronouns
During a January 2018 class, Meriwether responded to a student’s question with “yes, sir.” After class, the student told Meriwether that they were transgender and wanted to be addressed with female pronouns, according to a March 2021 release.
The professor declined to use female pronouns, but offered to call the student by first or last name, to which both the student and university officials disagreed, attorneys said.
The student filed a complaint with the university, which launched an investigation into the matter, according to the release.
Meriwether said he believes that “God created human beings as either male or female, that this sex is fixed in each person from the moment of conception, and that it cannot be changed, regardless of an individual’s feelings or desires,” court documents show.
“University officials ultimately rejected any compromise that would allow Meriwether to speak according to his conscience and sincerely held religious beliefs,” attorneys said in the release.
“Instead, they formally charged him, saying ‘he effectively created a hostile environment’ for the student simply by declining to use the feminine pronouns demanded by the student.”
’A coercion of my freedom of speech’
In November 2018, attorneys filed a lawsuit against the university on Meriwether’s behalf.
“The university has no place in telling professors how they are to think with the students,” Meriwether told Fox News. “It was a coercion of my freedom of speech.”
In March 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that the university violated the professor’s First Amendment rights, according to the release.
School officials, however, insist they were following “policy and federal law that protects students or any individual from bigotry and discrimination.”
“We continue to stand behind a student’s right to a discrimination-free learning environment as well as the rights of faculty, visitors, students and employees to freely express their ideas and beliefs,” the university said.
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