Teresa Buchanan v. F. King Alexander, et al.

Petitioner, Dr. Teresa Buchanan, was terminated from her tenured position at Louisiana State University under the school’s sexual harassment policies. Those policies were adopted pursuant to a federal “blueprint” for enforcing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 that downplayed concerns about the First Amendment and academic freedom, and which directed universities to sanction any “unwelcome verbal … conduct of a sexual nature” without regard to whether it is severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive. Although other circuits have invalidated nearly identical college sexual harassment policies as unconstitutionally vague or overbroad in violation of the First Amendment, the Fifth Circuit upheld Dr. Buchanan’s termination without any review of the policies enforced against her. The decision below presents two critical questions of First Amendment law that require this Court’s review:

1. Whether the Fifth Circuit erred by foreclosing Petitioner’s ability to challenge the constitutional validity of a public university’s speech regulation under which she was terminated from her tenured professor position?

2. Whether the Fifth Circuit erred by allowing enforcement of a public university’s sexual harassment policies that regulate speech using overly broad and vague terms, contrary to holdings of the Third, Fourth, and Ninth Circuits?