A federal appeals court has ruled the University of Washington illegally punished a professor for mocking a request that faculty members acknowledge “teaching on the ancestral lands” of Indigenous people.
The public Seattle campus investigated, reprimanded and threatened to discipline computer programming professor Stuart Reges after he repeatedly satirized its prescribed “University Land Acknowledgment” during the 2021-22 academic year.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared the school violated the First Amendment’s free speech protections by pressuring him to endorse it and harassing him for resisting.
Writing for the 2-1 majority, Judge Daniel Bress said that “offense in the university community” did not justify the school’s suspension of Mr. Reges’ merit-based raises and threats of further action if he didn’t back down.
“Student discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval,” wrote Judge Bress, a Trump appointee. “But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor.”
Judge Milan Smith, a George W. Bush appointee, concurred in Friday’s ruling.
Overturning a lower court decision, the majority rejected the school’s argument that Mr. Reges’ satire constituted “government speech” related to his job rather than his constitutionally protected opinion.
Senior Judge Sidney R. Thomas dissented.
“Universities have a responsibility to protect their students,” wrote Judge Thomas, a Clinton appointee. “This University, like other universities in the American West, has a particular obligation to its Native students.”
University of Washington spokesman Victor Balta said administrators were evaluating the ruling and considering next steps.
“We maintain that we have a responsibility to protect our students and that the UW acted appropriately,” Mr. Balta said in an email. “Professor Reges has retained his faculty position and has continued teaching throughout this process.”
Mr. Reges, who is in the middle of a three-year teaching contract, said in an email that he hopes the ruling “will help inspire others to push back against those who have been attempting to limit free speech on college campuses.”
“Land acknowledgements are performative acts of conformity,” the professor wrote. “The 9th Circuit has affirmed that my parody was a reasonable way to participate in the discussion of this important topic.”
Apologetic acknowledgements of ancestral indigenous ownership have become common at U.S. public land-grant campuses in recent years, building on a widespread trend in Canada.
In 2019, the University of Washington’s computer school recommended that professors include the University Land Acknowledgment in course descriptions.
“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,” reads the acknowledgment, posted on the school’s website.
Mr. Reges mocked the statement in a December 2021 email, then parodied it in his January 2022 syllabus.
“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,” Mr. Reges wrote in the syllabus.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a Philadelphia free speech group representing Mr. Reges in court, applauded Friday’s ruling.
“Today’s opinion is a resounding victory for Professor Stuart Reges and the First Amendment rights of public university faculty,” said Gabe Walters, a foundation attorney.
