Shawnee State University in Ohio has agreed to a settlement of US$400,000 after professor Nicholas Meriwether sued his workplace for disciplining him. The public university issued Meriwether a written warning in 2018 after he refused to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns, violating the school’s nondiscrimination policy.
According to a statement released by Meriwether’s lawyers, the professor will not be required to use a student’s preferred pronouns, even if they request it.
The lawsuit began when a transgender student in Meriwether’s class asked that the professor use her preferred pronouns, she and her. Meriwether refused, sparking a university investigation into the incident.
Shawnee State found that by misgendering the student, Meriwether had created a “hostile environment” in the classroom and warned the professor that he could be suspended or terminated if he continued the behaviour.
According to his lawyers, Meriwether “offered to use any name the student requested instead of titles and pronouns, but the university rejected that compromise.”
In 2018, Meriwether sued the university for infringing on his rights to free speech and religion. Initially, the lawsuit was thrown out for lack of standing but in March 2021, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that the professor could move forward with the lawsuit.
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The $400,000 settlement for damages and lawyer fees was reached on April 14 and the university has also rescinded the written warning it issued to Meriwether.
Meriwether was represented by the Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian nonprofit organization based in Arizona.
“Dr. Meriwether rightly defended his freedom to speak and stay silent, and not conform to the university’s demand for uniformity of thought,” Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel for ADF and director of its Center for Academic Freedom, said in a press release. “We commend the university for ultimately agreeing to do the right thing, in keeping with its reason for existence as a marketplace of ideas.”
Shawnee State, however, says the decision to settle was an economic one.
“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,” the university’s statement read.
The school says “it became clear that the case was being used to advance divisive social and political agendas at a cost to the university and its students.”
“That cost is better spent on fulfilling Shawnee State’s mission of service to our students, families and community,” its statement read.
A senior staff attorney and director of the Transgender Youth Project at the National Center for Lesbian Rights told the Columbus Dispatch that they believe Meriwether’s lawsuit “should have been dismissed and would have failed had the case continued.”
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But Langhofer says the case signals that professors across the country are legally protected if they don’t want to use a student’s preferred pronouns.
“We believe this not only protects the rights of Dr. Meriwether, it protects the rights of all professors to not be punished for simply declining to express an ideological belief that they disagree with,” Langhofer said via the Columbus Dispatch.
Meriwether told the Dispatch his Christian faith was the main reason he refused to use his student’s preferred pronouns, though he also had philosophical, scientific and biological reasons.
The settlement comes amidst a wave of anti-transgender legislation in the U.S.
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