Preferred pronouns – Professor wins First Amendment case An Ohio college professor who resisted his school’s orders to go along with transgender students’ preferred pronouns has won his First Amendment case before a federal appeals court. The ruling clears the way for the professor to pursue a lawsuit seeking damages, writes Mary Kay Linge for the New York Post. In a unanimous ruling, the sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals said that Shawnee State University violated Professor Nicholas Meriwether’s rights of free speech and free exercise of religion by punishing him for resisting school rules that forced him to address students in the terms of their choosing.