Why not ‘My Fuhrer’? Appeals court grills public college on forcing professor to call male student ‘miss’

A public university’s lawyer bumbled his way through oral argument last week on whether his taxpayer-funded client can force a philosophy professor to address a male student with female pronouns.

Sharp questioning by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals repeatedly left Keating Muething’s Paul Kerridge at a loss for words, including on whether Ohio’s Shawnee State University could similarly force a Jewish professor to address a student as “My Fuhrer.”

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The Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Meriwether, believes Thursday’s oral argument went well for his case.

Shawnee State’s Kerridge gave “surprising answers” to questions such as whether the university could also force a professor to open every class with a Black Lives Matter statement, Vice President of Appellete Advocacy John Bursch told reporters on a conference call after oral argument.

Meriwether told reporters that his academic field of philosophy deals with what a person believes is reality. He cannot “express a view of reality I do not hold,” and a university is not supposed to be “an assembly line for one type of thought.”