Professors Denied Free Speech Can Sue Campus Brass

WASHINGTON - Sept. 15, 2024 - PRLog -- A tenured professor whose free speech rights were violated when the University of Louisville refused to renew his contract because he merely questioned whether young children have the maturity to decide what sex they should be, can sue deans and the other campus bureaucrats who were responsible, a unanimous federal appeals court has just ruled.

When he sued - not the university but rather more than a dozen campus bureaucrats - they did not try to defend the illegal decision and their role in violating his rights, but instead tried to argue that they had "qualified immunity" to shield themselves.  The federal 6th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected this ploy, admonishing the bureaucrats.

Public interest law professor John Banzhaf has frequently explained hat often suing the individual bureaucrats rather than the university itself is often a far more effective legal strategy. .

But suing individual deans, department heads, or even committee chairmen is very different.

Even if the university provides them with defense counsel -the bureaucrat's credit rating can be adversely affected by simply being a named defendant, they will become subject to legal orders to disclose many things which could prove embarrassing as well as burdensome, and there is always the possibility of a large verdicts being entered against them as individuals.

Moreover, the effectiveness of the threat to the defendants, and the size of any potential verdict, can be made much larger - thereby greatly increasing the incentive to settle - if the legal action can be brought for a much higher amount than the salary of only one professor, say Banzhaf,

Suing for outrageously high damages, even if one has to try to use a novel and controversial legal theory, can be very effective since defendants can't make accurate predictions, in the absence of legal precedent, as to the chance that a huge judgement might be entered against them, and who wants to take even a one-percent chance of a hundred-million-dollar verdict, he says.

Without the possibility of lawsuits against campus brass, those bureaucrats participating the decision to violate the free speech, due process, and other rights of professors will have little incentive to refrain from such illegal conduct whenever it's convenient, and even less incentive to stand up for such a professor when others - including students, donors, legislators, parents, alumni, etc. - demand that something be done when a professor expresses a view which offends certain people, says Banzhaf.

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf