Three and a half years after the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals prohibited a public university from retaliating against a professor for refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns, the Cincinnati-based court went even further by stripping qualified immunity in a similar case.
University of Louisville officials can be held personally liable for allegedly retaliating against a psychiatry professor through a “hostile, humiliating work environment” designed to chill his speech and not renewing his contract after he questioned so-called gender-affirming care at a Heritage Foundation event in 2017, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled.
President Biden nominee Judge Andre Mathis, who dissented from blocking the former’s entire Title IX rewrite but not the gender-identity provisions, wrote the opinion, joined by judges Ronald Lee Gilman and Richard Allen Griffin, nominated by presidents Clinton and George W. Bush.
“The First Amendment protects popular and unpopular speech alike,” Mathis opened the 22-page ruling, which upheld a lower court decision denying officials both qualified and “state sovereignty” immunity. It affirmed the lower court’s denial of summary judgment for the school. […]
— Read More: justthenews.com
