https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10728699/Shawnee-State-agrees-pay-400k-professor-refused-use-trans-students-preferred-pronouns.html
Shawnee State University has agreed to pay $400,000 to professor Nick Meriwether, who sued the school after it punished him for refusing to use a student's preferred pronouns in 2018.Meriwether, a devout Christian and a professor of philosophy who has taught at Shawnee State for 25-years, sued the school for violating his First Amendment rights.
Ah yes, the pronoun militants, who believe using pronouns that match a person's sex makes them a cunt.Shawnee State and Meriwether reached the settlement on Friday after a unanimous ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2021 found that the school had violated Meriwether's right to free speech and free exercise of religion.
Controversy began on the first day of Shawnee's second semester in January 2018, when Merewether responded to a student's question by saying 'Yes, sir.'
After class the student, who was born a male but identifies as a female, asked that Merewether refer to them as a woman and with female pronouns.
Merewether said he could not comply with the student's wishes because they violated his religious beliefs that gender is determined from the moment of conception.
Court documents say that the student became belligerent when Meriwether refused to comply, told him he would be fired, and said 'I guess this means I can call you a cu**.'
Yes indeed. Meriwether refusing participation in the gender cultist religious rites means he was the one creating the hostile environment.The student filed a complaint with the school, and Meriwether was told by Dean Roberta Millikan to refrain from using gender pronouns at all in his class. Meriwether said this was next to impossible and offered to refer to the transgender student by their last name only, which Millikan accepted.
The student then complained to the school twice more - once after Meriwether referred to them as 'Mr.' before correcting himself - and threatened legal action if they did not take action against Meriwether.
Meriwether then offered to refer to all students by their preferred pronouns if he could include a note in his syllabus stating that he was doing so 'under compulsion and setting forth his personal and religious beliefs about gender identity.'
Dean Millikan refused this option on the grounds that it would violate Shawnee's gender-identity policy.
Millikan then informed Meriwether that an investigation was being opened into the complaints against him, which later resulted in the claim that he had 'created a hostile environment' in his classroom.
The university didn't agree to any such thing. They were rightfully forced to do the right thing.The school filed a formal warning against Meriwether and told him that 'further corrective actions' would be taken against him if he did not comply to their demands about how to refer to transgender students.
Meriwether said that the school's warning prevented him from addressing gender issues in class discussions because he feared he could be fired or suspended for not following the school's beliefs.
He also said that that the warning-letter would make it 'difficult, if not impossible' to be hired at another school should he leave Shawnee State.
In response to the warning, Meriwether filed a lawsuit against Shawnee State alleging that the school violated his First Amendment rights.
The suit was initially dismissed, but on March 26, 2021, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the dismissal and unanimously ruled that Meriwether's freedom of speech had been violated.
'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 the decision.
If professors lacked free-speech protections when teaching, a university would wield alarming power to compel ideological conformity,' Thapar wrote.
On Friday Shawnee State settled with Meriwether and agreed to pay him $400,000 in damages and attorney's fees.
'Public universities should welcome intellectual and ideological diversity, where all students and professors can engage in meaningful discussions without compromising their core beliefs,' said Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer of the Alliance Defending 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.'