Court Rules Against Professor Who Refused to Call Transgender Student by Their Preferred Pronouns
Shane Trejo
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A court has determined that an Ohio college professor does not have the free speech in the classroom to decline a request to refer to a transgender student by their preferred pronoun.
The situation began when Nicholas Meriwether, who teaches Religious Philosophy at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, filed the lawsuit after the school informed him that he had to harbor the delusions of a transgender student or face the consequences.
“Tolerance is a two-way street. Universities are meant to be a marketplace of ideas, not an assembly line for one type of thought, but apparently, Shawnee State has ignored that foundational truth,” wrote Alliance Defending Freedom Travis Barham, who represented Meriwether in the case.
The Acting Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at SSU, Roberta Milliken initially received a complaint from Meriwether, who alleges that the transgender student pledged to get him fired and called him a “c**t” when he refused to use their preferred pronouns. Milliken advised Meriwether to only refer to students by their last names in order to not offend the transgender student, which he at first rejected.
Meriwether said that “referring to students by last names alone would undermine the serious pedagogical environment he seeks to create, because that is what people refer to one another in junior high or on an athletic team, and not the way scholars engage in a serious, respectful enterprise, refer to one another.”
Eventually Meriwether did comply with the order, but that was not enough. The transgender student continued to get triggered and the University began investigating Meriwether as a result. He feels he was ultimately “silenced” and “punished” by the school for refusing to take actions against his Christian faith.
“Milliken expressed to Meriwether that the student was not satisfied with the arrangement and had threatened to file a Title IX grievance over Dr. Meriwether’s expression,” the lawsuit stated.
His case was dismissed by a federal court last week by Judge Susan Dlott, a left-wing appointee of former President Bill Clinton. She essentially determined that Meriwether’s 1st Amendment rights are no match for the transgender individual’s precious feelings – a troubling sign of things to come as the rule of law is replaced by rule of leftist mob.
“The Court concludes that Meriwether failed to state a claim for violation of his rights under the United States Constitution,” she ruled.
The LGBT movement is gloating as a result of this ruling.
“Since this lawsuit began, transgender students have been worried that they would have to start skipping classes or avoid particular professors because Shawnee State would no longer be able to effectively address bullying, harassment, and mistreatment of transgender students,” said Jae Keniston, the president of Shawnee’s LGBTQ organization SAGA, in a statement.
If the LGBT movement has their way, religious liberty will soon become a thing of the past, and Christians will be forced to kowtow to an agenda that is openly and blatantly blasphemous to their sacred beliefs.
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