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In a unanimous ruling, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Shawnee State University violated Prof. 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 Trump and issued Friday, 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. //
“To accede to these demands would have required Dr. Meriwether to communicate views regarding gender identity that he does not hold, that he does not wish to communicate, and that would contradict (and force him to violate) his sincerely held Christian beliefs,” the lawsuit reads.
The suit claims that “the number of potential gender identities is infinite” and that there are over 100 “different options currently available.”
School officials countered by saying that respecting students’ pronouns is a part of Meriwether’s job, and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. //
Meriwether’s win on appeal, handed down by Thapar, who was rumored to be one of the attorneys on the list to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court, allows him to recoup damages for the school’s decision to reprimand him.
“Nobody should be forced to contradict their core beliefs just to keep their job,” his attorney John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, said of Meriwether’s case.