Trump judge rules professor has constitutional right to degrade trans students during class

Federal Appeals Court judge Amul Thapar
Photo: Kyblueimages – Wikimedia Commons

Federal Appeals Court judge Amal Thapar has penned a stunning decision that declares a college professor has a First Amendment right to insult and degrade transgender students in class. The ruling allows the professor to sue the university for discrimination.

Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio, refused to refer to a transgender woman using female pronouns, claiming it violated his religious beliefs. The school is a public university and not religiously affiliated.

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A panel of conservative judges made the decision, including Joan Larsen, a Trump appointee, and David McKeague, who was appointed by George W. Bush. A previous judge had dismissed Meriwether’s complaint, but this decision gives him the right to sue.

“If professors lacked free-speech protections when teaching, a university would wield alarming power to compel ideological conformity,” Thapar wrote in the decision, claiming it could compel “a civil rights icon to condemn the Freedom Riders.”

The over-the-top opinion also compared the nondiscrimination policy to the McCarthy era…

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