A public university in Ohio has agreed to pay $400,000 to one of its professors after it rebuked him for refusing to use a student’s pronouns.
In 2018, Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in southern Ohio, addressed a transgender student as “sir” when she raised her hand in class.
This prompted the university to launch an investigation into the incident. It found that Meriwether had created a “hostile environment” in the classroom.
The university delivered Meriwether a written warning that stated that he could be fired or suspended without pay for violating the university’s nondiscrimination policy.
Meriwether asked if referring to all students by their self-identified gender, and including a disclaimer in his syllabus that noted he was only doing so under “compulsion”, would comply with the university’s policies, which he was told would not.