VICTORY! ACLJ Wins Employment Case and Returns a Fired Professor to His Classroom

The ACLJ has won another victory for your First Amendment rights. We achieved a return to work and full restoration of salary for our client, a New York philosophy professor, who was fired for exercising his First Amendment rights. After we took action and fought on his behalf, his university dropped the charges it had brought against him and fully restored him to his employment. We also ensured that they restored all his salary that he had been denied.

Our client has taught for 20 years and is a beloved figure among his students. He was suspended, and then terminated, for statements he made during a class he was teaching, describing the views of one of the philosophers he had assigned to the students. This termination was also based on statements that students had made in the classroom, statements that the school decided were appropriate to hold the professor responsible for. Because of these statements made during the academic discussion in the classroom, the school removed our client from campus and terminated his employment with only a few weeks left in the semester, without any warning beforehand or a chance to explain himself.

We took action to defend this professor’s rights to academic freedom and to First Amendment expression. This professor is part of a union and subject to a collective bargaining agreement that required him to first fight what happened through an arbitration process before he could attempt to go to court. So we agreed to represent the professor in an appeal to the arbitration process, where we expected to fight for his First Amendment rights and for his protected rights to academic freedom.

After we appealed to arbitration at the beginning of the summer, the university delayed providing us the information necessary to begin the arbitration process and did whatever it could to delay actually having the case resolved. In response, we informed the university that its conduct violated our client’s rights. We served the university with thorough discovery requests, demanding the documents and records behind our client’s firing. The university still continued to delay and didn’t want to provide the information requested. So once the arbitrator was finally selected, we prepared to go before the arbitrator and make sure that the university provided the documents we needed.

But before we could do so, the university surrendered, afraid of our document requests. It returned him to work, lifting the discipline it had attempted to impose. There was not even any discipline left on his employment record. We then made sure that every cent of his salary was returned to him. He is now reentering his classroom to teach again and fulfill his calling to discuss crucial issues with students now that all the inappropriately imposed consequences for his speech have been lifted. His salary has been fully restored, and he is able to do what he loves again.

Public employees like university professors do not lose their First Amendment rights just because they work for the government. Universities cannot make employment decisions because they are afraid of unpopular ideas. We are representing other professors in similar situations, facing antisemitic discrimination and illegal termination. At the ACLJ, we stand with teachers facing illegal and unlawful discrimination. No one should be punished for their beliefs or lose their job for teaching their subject.