Texas Tech University faculty groups sued Chancellor Brandon Creighton and the university system's Board of Regents in federal court Wednesday, seeking to block new classroom restrictions they argue violate the First Amendment by limiting instruction on race, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
The Texas Tribune reported that the lawsuit challenges two memos issued by Creighton after he became chancellor, including an April directive requiring faculty to recognize only "two human sexes" and prohibiting teaching gender identity as a spectrum or more than two genders as fact.
The policy also calls for phasing out academic programs centered on sexual orientation and gender identity, freezing admissions to affected programs, limiting future research in those fields, and directing faculty hiring to align with the new requirements.
The Texas American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers and the national American Association of University Professors argue the restrictions violate the First Amendment, are unconstitutionally vague under the Fourteenth Amendment, and discriminate against Black faculty by targeting instruction on Black history, racial inequality, and related topics.
The lawsuit says professors have been required to certify that their summer and fall courses comply with the policies and could face discipline for violations.
It also alleges professors were told medical students could not observe or participate in treating transgender patients, even when patients sought care for unrelated conditions, and that a Holocaust course could lose its place in the core curriculum if it included instruction on gay and bisexual victims of the Nazis.
The complaint also says regents barred instruction using Plato's "Republic" and Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me."
Creighton has defended the restrictions as necessary to comply with state and federal law and to ensure students earn "degrees of value."
He said Texas Tech seeks to send a message that its "door is open to every walk of life" and described the guidance as fostering "diversity of viewpoint."
Asked whether limiting instruction on gender identity, sexuality, and race supports that goal, Creighton responded, "yes," and called the policy a "continuum of common sense."
The lawsuit says Creighton is imposing restrictions that lawmakers declined to include in legislation expanding the Board of Regents' authority over curriculum.
"Chancellor Creighton is trying to do through fiat what he couldn't accomplish in the Texas legislature: erase the history, identities and lived experiences of LGBTQ people and people of color from the classroom," Lambda Legal senior attorney Nicholas Hite said in a statement.