A coalition of pro-LGBTQ+, educational, and free-speech advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit today against the Texas Tech University system for violating their rights to free speech and due process rights by censoring lessons on LGBTQ+ people and anti-Black racism.
The lawsuit challenges memoranda issued by university Chancellor Brandon Creighton and the system’s Board of Regents that requires teaching faculty within the system’s five universities to submit all their course materials for a “stringent” audit to ensure they contain no “advocacy or promotion of race or sex-based prejudice,” any reference to more than two sexes, any course materials related to gender identity, and any course materials related to “[human] sexual orientation,” the lawsuit states. Creighton and the board require professors to remove such material under threat of discipline or firing.
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As a result, philosophy professors were forbidden from teaching about themes of homosexuality in Plato’s Symposium, law professors were blocked from teaching about the Supreme Court’s racist 1857 Dred Scott decision in a first-year constitutional law course, and medical professors were told not to treat any transgender patients in front of students. The memoranda have not restricted any lessons on white or non-LGBTQ+ communities.
“[Creighton and the Board of Regents] have created an educational environment replete with fear and confusion, rather than the academic excellence and free exchange of ideas that all universities endeavor to achieve,” the lawsuit states. “[The memoranda] employ language that is so vague as to prevent educators from sufficiently understanding the scope of their prohibitions.”
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The lawsuit alleges that Creighton unsuccessfully introduced legislation to enforce similar viewpoint discrimination in Texas universities during his time as a Texas state senator, but he has now successfully done so as a university chancellor. Consequently, professors cannot teach “unimpeachable and undisputed facts” or “remotely accurate or inclusive curriculum,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also notes Creighton’s many statements opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; his support for preserving public confederate monuments; and his attacks on so-called “woke,” “biased,” “critical race theory,” “divisive concepts,” and “indoctrination” that teach that the U.S. was founded “by white men, for the benefit of white men.”
Non-white professors are more likely to teach about diversity and racial concepts than white professors, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit was brought by the American Association of University Professors and its Texas affiliate, Texas AAUP-AFT, with representation from Lambda Legal, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, according to The Advocate.
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