AAUP sues over Texas Tech classroom instruction limits

Dive Brief:

Two faculty groups sued the Texas Tech University System’s board and chancellor Wednesday over a pair of memos limiting classroom instruction on race, sex, gender and sexual orientation.
The directives, issued by Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton in December and April, violate faculty’s free speech and due process rights, alleges a lawsuit from the American Association of University Professors and the Texas American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers.
AAUP and Texas AAUP-AFT are asking a federal court to block enforcement of the memos and rule them unconstitutional.

Dive Insight:

Since the December memo came out, Texas Tech has restricted faculty across the system’s five campuses from teaching on wide swathes of race- and sex-related subjects. Those who failed to comply would face disciplinary action, Creighton said at the time.

Wednesday’s lawsuit, filed by the Legal Defense Fund and Lambda Legal, alleged that the restrictions bar faculty from teaching about topics ranging from the persecution of queer men during the Holocaust to race-related health disparities. The lawsuit further alleged that the limits prohibit faculty from teaching classic and influential works, such as “Republic” by Plato and “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. 

Additionally, faculty “were restricted from presenting factual information about race” related to the landmark Dred Scott v. Sandford decision to law students, according to the complaint.

At Angelo State University, a professor was barred from teaching two African American studies courses because “they had mention of queer communities,” Antonio Ingram II, senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, said during a press call Wednesday. 

And at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, medical faculty were told to refrain from treating transgender patients if a medical student was present, the lawsuit said.

“To be clear, that is not in the context of gender-affirming medical care,” Nicholas Hite, senior attorney at Lambda Legal, said during the call. “Medical students are barred from interacting with transgender patients for any reason.”

The university system did not immediately respond to questions on Wednesday.

The December memo also required faculty to submit course materials “related to sexual orientation” to the board of regents for review.

Creighton, who took over the system in November, previously served as a Republican state lawmaker for nearly two decades and was a driving force behind Texas banning diversity, equity and inclusion work at public colleges in 2023.

In the April memo, he said that Texas Tech would eliminate programs “centered on” sexual orientation and gender identity. Provosts had until June 15 to tell Creighton which academic programs they planned to cut based on his guidance. Students in those programs will be able to complete their studies, but the system will halt their admissions moving forward, according to Creighton’s April memo.

However, the chancellor’s two memos never made clear to faculty what was actually banned, according to the lawsuit from AAUP and Texas AAUP-AFT.

For instance, Creighton’s memos exempted graduate coursework and instruction “related to professional licensure or patient care” from the restrictions, the lawsuit said. “Yet, confusingly, Plaintiffs’ members’ curriculum for master’s degrees, medical school licensing exams, and clinical programs for patient care were still modified to comply with the Creighton Memoranda, disregarding the explicit exceptions.”

The confusion has caused Texas Tech faculty to self-censor, according to T J Geiger, vice president of the Texas AAUP-AFT chapter at Texas Tech University.

“When faculty don’t know where leadership’s line is, there’s an incentive to overcorrect to avoid punishment, making a bad situation even worse,” he said Wednesday, calling the memos’ vague language intentional.

A May poll conducted by Texas Tech’s faculty senate found that a quarter of surveyed faculty reported being told to alter their course content because of the directives. Nearly half of those polled said they preemptively changed their courses.

Ingram on Wednesday called Texas Tech’s policies “one of the most egregious forms of censorship we’ve seen nationwide.”

In addition to violating the First Amendment and due process rights, the directives intentionally discriminate against Black professors in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, the lawsuit alleges. The restrictions, it says, disproportionately impact Black faculty because they “are more likely than their white colleagues to teach and research topics on race.