An Ohio philosophy professor, disciplined by Shawnee State University for declining to use a transgender student’s preferred personal pronouns, is appealing the dismissal of his federal lawsuit against the university. Professor Nicholas Meriwether’s lawsuit argued that the Portsmouth, Ohio, university “denied him his right to exercise his religion under the Ohio constitution, and have breached their contract with him.” The lawsuit says that the university also denied “Meriwether’s fundamental and clearly established rights under the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.” Meriwether, a Christian, seeks to reverse a Cincinnati-based judge’s decision that quashed his original lawsuit filed on Nov. 5, 2018. Alliance Defending Freedom , which focuses on First Amendment and religious liberty cases, is representing Meriwether. ADF filed the appeal Thursday. “This isn’t just about a pronoun; this is about endorsing an ideology,” said ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom, in a statement posted Thursday on ADF’s website . “The university favors certain beliefs, and it wants to force Dr. Meriwether to cry uncle and endorse them as well. That’s neither legal nor constitutional, and neither was the process the university has used to get to this […]
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