Judges appointed by presidents of both parties and red states are tag-teaming to protect academics and medical professionals from inquisitions based on their speech and conscience, amid a flood of signed legislation just this month cementing parental, religious and sex-based rights while kneecapping government promotion of gender ideology.

The University of Louisville agreed to pay former psychiatry professor Allan Josephson nearly $1.6 million to resolve his retaliation and nonrenewal lawsuit rather than risk a worse result from a jury, in damages and being forced to rehire him, after the 6th U.S. Circuit of Appeals stripped its public officials of qualified immunity, Josephson's lawyers said last week. 

Recruited by UofL in 2003 to head up its Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology, Josephson put a target on his back at a Heritage Foundation event in 2017 by questioning so-called gender-affirming care for kids, leading to his demotion, teaching ban and a coordinated effort to gin up grounds to not renew his contract.

The taxpayer-funded university declined to confirm the $1.6 million figure, telling Just the News "this settlement is related to a personnel matter." 

The Cincinnati-based court's unanimous decision last fall was written by Judge Andre Mathis, who earlier bit the hand that nominated him by joining colleagues to block President Biden's conflation of sex and gender identity in updated Title IX regulations.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings dismissed Josephson's lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it can't be refiled, April 21. In an order dated Feb. 21, Jennings said "settlement has been reached on all matters in this case" and dismissed it without prejudice, instructing the parties to either consummate the settlement or file to red-docket the lawsuit within 45 days.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Josephson, said the agreement covered both damages and attorney's fees but declined to share further terms with Just the News, including what portion went to its fees. It filed the lawsuit just over six years ago.

"I wanted it actually to go to court, because I thought that would be the final vindication," Josephson told The Free Press, but he "felt vindicated by the amount that we won." He called the personal cost "enormous" and the timing beneficial, given his age.

“I'm a doctor who pursues the truth for his patients, so when [President] Trump says there are two sexes – male and female – I’m encouraged by that,” Josephson said, referring to one of several executive orders against gender ideology from the new administration.

"I’m overwhelmed to see that my case helped lead the way for other medical practitioners to see the universal truth that altering biological sex is impossibly dangerous while acceptance of one’s sex leads to flourishing," he said in ADF's settlement announcement.

LGBTQ magazine The Advocate blasted UofL for two "caves" the same week, the Josephson settlement and canceling its segregated "Lavender Graduation" for LGBTQ students in light of new federal and state policies against diversity, equity and inclusion.

Qualified immunity 'particularized to the facts of each case'?

The University of Illinois Chicago refused to concede after the Chicago-based 7th Circuit denied its public officials qualified immunity – typically a spur for settlement talks – and unanimously reinstated law professor Jason Kilborn's retaliation claims based on punishing him for using a redacted racial slur in an employment discrimination scenario on a test.

UIC ignored nearly six decades of Supreme Court precedent on the First Amendment and academic speech and badly misread its Garcetti precedent, which allowed public employers to regulate employee speech on the job but explicitly excluded "speech related to scholarship or teaching," President Trump nominee Judge Thomas Kirsch wrote for the panel.

The university petitioned the full 7th Circuit to rehear the case last month, so it can't yet return to President Obama nominee U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, who dismissed most of the case after misreading Garcetti, in the panel's view, by requiring Kilborn to show "his speech involved matters of public concern."

UIC said the panel ignored a recent decision by the full appeals court on qualified immunity, "which reaffirmed that clearly established law must be particularized to the facts of each case." Instead it relied "exclusively on cases that recognize only a generalized right to 'academic freedom'" and for the first time removed "university professors" entirely from Garcetti.

Kilborn's reply said UIC was trying to "extend Garcetti" but it needs "a change in established law to prevail on their argument that Kilborn’s speech should not be protected."

Gender identity, sports, religion and parental rights

Republican-led states across the South and Midwest are providing a backstop with new laws protecting medical conscience, girls' privacy against gender-confused males, parents' right to know their kids' expressed gender confusion in school and religious freedom from government interference and discrimination.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed SB 444, which protects medical workers from participating in "abortion, assisted suicide, or gender transition procedure[s]," discrimination for whistleblowing and licensing board sanctions for First Amendment activity except when it was the "direct cause" of physical harm to a patient within three years.

The next day, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed SB 955, which grants similar protections but does not mention any specific procedures or services. Sanders also signed SB 486, which limits "women's restrooms, changing rooms, and sleeping quarters" in domestic violence shelters, correctional facilities, and government buildings to the female sex.

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun signed SB 143, a parental right-to-know law that prevents governmental entities such as public schools from withholding information "related to the child's health care or social, emotional, and behavioral well-being, and HB 1041, which prohibits males from participating in girls' sports.

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrissey signed HB 2129, a similar parental right-to-know law, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a sweeping religious freedom law, SB 36, that says the state can't "substantially burden" religious exercise, even under a "rule of general applicability," without a "compelling government interest" through "the least restrictive means." 

In related First Amendment news, a federal judge also blocked a portion of an Illinois law on immunity for medical providers that requires pro-life pregnancy centers to promote the "benefits" of abortion, deeming it unconstitutional compelled speech.

President Trump nominee Judge Iain Johnston, however, upheld a provision that requires the centers to give clients, "upon request," information on other medical professionals "whom they reasonably believe might perform abortions," because it's "prompted by a patient."