A local lawsuit that drew national attention has been dismissed by a federal court. Shawnee State University Professor Nicholas Meriwether sued the university after he was reprimanded for refusing to call a transgender student by the preferred pronoun of ‘she.’
Meriwether, a professor of religion and philosophy, said that it was against his religion to acknowledge transgenderism and sued the university for violating his civil rights. “I am a Christian. As such, it is my sincerely held religious belief, based on the Bible’s teachings, that God created human beings as either male or female, that this gender is fixed in each person from the moment of conception, and that it cannot be changed,” he said in response to the warning.
U.S. District Judge Susan J. Dlott dismissed the lawsuit on Thursday. In her ruling, Judge Dlott said the issue involved a convoluted overlap of issues of academic freedom, transgender identity, civility, the First Amendment, and freedom of religion. The court concluded that Meriwether’s speech, the manner in which he addressed a transgender student, was not protected by the First Amendment and the reprimands were not a violation of his civil rights. She also said that he failed to show how the reprimands violated his freedom of religion.
View the actual Court ruling here.
