The lawsuit by math professor Lars Jensen is Jensen v Brown.
He is represented by FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which advocates for free speech rights.
Jensen sued his employer, Truckee Meadows Community College, after he was punished by a college dean for “insubordination” after passing out flyers that criticized the school for allowing remedial math classes to count as college credits.
Truckee Meadows, located in Reno, Nevada, is home to about 11,800 students and 500 faculty members.
FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner says his client was punished after he criticized Truckee Meadows for lowering its math standards for students.
“And he thought that they lowered them to the point where it was deluding the value of the degree that students were getting,” Ortner, describing the conflict from 2021, recalls.
Picking up the story from there, an article by law professor Jonathan Turley says Truckee Meadows dean Julie Ellsworth ordered Jensen to stop passing out flyers that criticized the math standards. He ignored the warning and was later written up for “insubordination” in two performance reviews that threatened his employment.
The lawsuit caught Turley’s attention because the math professor is making a free speech argument.
Jensen’s free speech argument got noticed by the 9th Circuit, too, which cited the landmark 1968 Pickering case. That ruling favored a public school teacher who criticized the board of education in a newspaper’s letter to the editor.
“Jensen’s criticism of the changes in TMCC’s mathematics curriculum addressed a matter of public concern,” the full panel of the 9th Circuit ruled.
Citing the Pickering ruling, the 9th Circuit reversed a lower court dismissal of the case from 2023 and allowed Jensen’s lawsuit to proceed.
The court's reversal, Ortner says, suggests a right to speak freely is "clearly established."
