Professor Sues University of Louisville for Alleged Termination Due to his Transgender Views

On October 11, 2017, Dr. Josephson participated in Heritage Foundation’s panel presentation entitled “Gender Dysphoria in Children: Understanding the Science and Medicine.” He was joined on the panel by Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians, and Dr. Paul Hruz, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Washington University School of Medicine.

The complaint alleges that Stacie Steinbock, director of the LGBT Center at the University’s Health Science Center, Brian W. Buford, then the Executive Director of the LGBT Center, and Dr. Christine Brady, assistant professor in the Division took the lead in efforts to retaliate against Josephson for holding opposing views on gender dysphoria.

Notably, the complaint also alleges that one group involved in these efforts held opposing interests in another pending case involving Dr. Josephson: “On October 29, 2017, Dr. Josephson learned that Lambda Legal, the LGBT advocacy group representing the plaintiff in the federal case in Florida for which he served as an expert witness, intended to subpoena multiple University officials.”

Ultimately, Josephson was stripped of his position as the chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology and demoted to a junior faculty member status. Later the university refused to renew his contract. I have previously written about how such contract faculty are particularly vulnerable to pressure and coercion over their academic or political views.

What is interesting is the latest skirmish in the litigation. On November 14, the university argued that Dr. Josephson must prove that he was aware the university was allegedly harassing him to use the alleged incidents as evidence. It insists that some of these meetings and measures were carried out without his knowledge and therefore could not have contributed to a “hostile environment” or made him “suffer.”