On Tuesday, attorneys for a Kentucky professor argued before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that University of Louisville officials violated his First Amendment rights by firing him over remarks he made on gender dysphoria.
Allan Josephson’s issues with school officials began after he participated in a panel discussion for the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., in 2017.
He spoke on treatment approaches for youth experiencing gender dysphoria, urging that the issue is a social-cultural, psychological phenomenon that can’t be fully treated with drugs and surgery. At the time of the event, Josephson worked as the division chief of the University of Louisville’s Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology.
Seven weeks after his presentation, the university demoted Josephson’s role to junior faculty member. Officials claimed the job change stemmed from numerous faculty members’ disagreement with Josephson’s management approach to children with gender dysphoria.
According to Josephson, school officials kept harassing Josephson by banning him from staff meetings, barring him from seeing patients who identify as LGBTQ, removing trainees from him, and taking away his teaching duties.
Josephson had worked at the school since 2003 and had earned perfect annual review marks in 2014, 2015, and 2016. In February 2019, officials fired Josephson by not renewing his contract for the following year, citing a slump in productivity. Josephson’s lawsuit states that his productivity slumped briefly but rebounded. Other faculty members with similar results were not disciplined, Josephson said.
Josephson then sued the school in March 2019, alleging that the university officials retaliated against his constitutionally protected speech. In March 2023, a federal district court ruled that a jury should hear the case. University officials appealed the case to the 6th Circuit.
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