(LifeSiteNews) — A former ethics adjunct professor has sued the University of Arizona for firing him over what he says was his public defense of parental rights and opposition to schools’ promotion of gender ideology.
Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit Monday on behalf of Daniel Grossenbach complaining of First Amendment religious rights and free speech violations by the university, alleging that he was fired due to complaints about his advocacy on behalf of students and their parents in the district, AZ Central reported.
While the university claims Grossenbach’s termination was unrelated to his public advocacy work, he and his attorneys are arguing that university emails show he was fired due to complaints over this activism, rooted in the natural law and Christian principles.
Complaints were made against the professor stemming from the local parental-rights group he founded, Save Catalina Foothills School District, the district where his children attended school. He formed the group in 2021 after a school district email was published both showing pronoun preferences for certain students and indicating that some of these students did not want their parents to know about their gender confusion.
Grossenbach fervently opposed the policy of hiding children’s “gender identity” and pronoun preferences from their own parents, saying that this violated their “fundamental” parental rights. His group also opposed the district schools’ distribution of “gender identity” surveys, and Grossenbach brought these issues before the school board.
His lawsuit points out that shortly before he was fired, the University of Arizona received anonymous complaints about his advocacy work, claiming that he ran an “anti-gay hate group” and spread “misinformation,” The College Fix reported.
One critic accused Grossenbach of violating university policy by “misgendering” individuals, referring to gender-confused people as “mentally ill” and posting an article that said “Satan respects pronouns.”
The same person highlighted internet posts in which Grossenbach tagged Libs of TikTok or Charlie Kirk, the late founder of Turning Point USA, which the complainant called “hate groups.”
The Pima County Democratic Party referred to Grossenbach’s group in a social media post as a “MAGA, extremist PAC” that was trying to “wholly alter” the school district.
The “smoking gun” email that Grossenbach uncovered after his records request showed that faculty who received complaints about him said the situation might “take care of itself” if they could find an endowed professor.
Grossenbach’s lawyers are seeking his reinstatement to his position with back pay, and damages due to alleged harm to his reputation. They are arguing that the university violated the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the First, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
“America’s universities are supposed to serve as the ‘marketplace of ideas,’ but instead the University of Arizona sought to silence opinions it disagrees with, making their classrooms little more than ‘enclaves of totalitarianism,’” they told the federal district judge.
