Appeals Court Rules for Professor in Transgender Pronoun Case

Shawnee State University professor Nicholas Meriwether in a file photograph. Courtesy of Alliance Defending Freedom

A federal appeals court on March 26 reversed a lower court decision, ruling that an Ohio professor’s First Amendment rights may have been violated when his university tried forcing him to refer to a biological male student using female pronouns.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether “has plausibly alleged that Shawnee State violated his First Amendment rights by compelling his speech or silence and casting a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”