A University of Washington professor cannot be punished for making fun of a school policy in his syllabus, an appeals court panel has ruled.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling last Friday in the case of Stuart Reges v. Ana Mari Cauce, et al. At issue is Professor Stuart Reges’ decision to make fun of a university policy that officially acknowledged that the land the campus was built on originally belonged to Native Americans.
Circuit Judge Daniel Bress, a Trump appointee, authored the majority opinion, which overturned a lower court ruling against Reges and sent the case back to the court for further proceedings.
Bress wrote that “debate and disagreement are hallmarks of higher education” and that any “discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval.”
“But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor,” he wrote. “We hold that the university’s actions toward the professor violated his First Amendment rights.”
Circuit Judge Sidney R. Thomas, a Clinton appointee, authored a partial dissent to the panel opinion, writing that he believed the university had a valid interest in disciplining Reges.
“I respectfully disagree with the majority’s conclusion that Reges’s speech interests outweigh the University of Washington’s interests. Universities have a responsibility to protect their students,” wrote Thomas.
“This University, like other universities in the American West, has a particular obligation to its Native students. The disruption Reges’s speech caused to Native students’ learning outweighed his own First Amendment interests.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is representing Reges, released a statement celebrating the appeals court panel decision.
“Today’s opinion recognizes that sometimes, ‘exposure to views that distress and offend is a form of education unto itself,’” stated FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley. “As we always say at FIRE: If you graduate from college without once being offended, you should ask for your money back.”
In 2015, the university adopted a “land acknowledgment” statement, which read “The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.”
Responding to a recommendation to include the statement in course syllabi, Reges parodied it in a class syllabus in January 2022, writing “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”
This was in reference to Enlightenment philosopher John Locke’s theory of property rights, which argued, in part, that people own the natural resources they labor on.
Reges faced backlash from students and school officials, and a university investigation in June 2023 concluded that the professor likely violated university policy with the parody.
In 2022, as the investigation was ongoing, Reges filed a lawsuit against university officials, alleging viewpoint discrimination and violation of First Amendment rights.
