(WSAZ/NBC News) A Shawnee State University professor is suing officials at the small public university in Ohio after receiving a written warning for violating its nondiscrimination policy by not addressing a transgender student using the gender terms preferred by the student.
Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor and evangelical Christian, filed a federal lawsuit this month against officials at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth.
He contends that officials violated his constitutional rights by, among other things, compelling him to speak in a way that contradicts his religious beliefs.
After the student, a transgender female, complained to the university, the lawsuit alleges the school “punished” Meriwether for “expressing views that differ from its own orthodoxy and for declining to express its mandated ideological message” according to the lawsuit.
Meriwether, who has worked at the university since 1996, argued he didn’t discriminate and that he treated the student like “other biologically male students.”
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