Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge erred in relying on federal guidance on sexual harassment when it fired a tenured professor accused of subjecting students to obscene language and sexually explicit jokes, a new lawsuit challenging her dismissal argues.
The lawsuit asserts that Louisiana State based its decision to fire Teresa K. Buchanan, a tenured associate professor of curriculum and instruction, on an overly expansive definition of sexual harassment shaped by federal guidance that oversteps the law.
Citing the university’s own policies, the lawsuit says, “No suggestion has ever been made that Professor Buchanan engaged in any kind of ‘physical behavior of a sexual nature,’ ‘quid pro quo harassment,’ or ‘sexual discrimination’ of any kind.” Instead, it says, “the purported violations of LSU policies were based entirely on occasional comments that some later claimed offended them.”
The lawsuit says “the language in question was integrated into her pedagogical approach and was not directed at — not did it disparage — any student.”
Ernest G. Ballard 3rd, a spokesman for Louisiana State, said in an email on Wednesday that officials there had not seen the lawsuit, filed earlier that day in the U.S. District Court in Baton Rouge. He added, however, that they were “confident that our action regarding Ms. Buchanan was appropriate.”
“We take our responsibility to protect students from abusive behavior very seriously,” Mr. Ballard said, “and we will vigorously defend our students’ rights to a harassment-free educational environment.”
The arguments in the lawsuit make clear that it is aimed as much at the Education Department officials whose guidance Louisiana State followed as at the university administrators who are its named defendants. The litigation is being sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a national advocacy group that promotes free speech on college campuses.
The lawsuit says the university policies cited by administrators to justify Ms. Buchanan’s dismissal “define ‘sexual harassment’ without regard for First Amendment protections governing free speech and academic freedom.”
The Education Department is not a named defendant in the suit. It has defended its interpretation of Title IX, and its use of the law to pressure colleges to discipline perpetrators of sexual harassment and sexual assault, as necessary to protect students.
LSU’s Faculty Senate responded to the university’s handling of Ms. Buchanan’s case by voting overwhelmingly in October to censure the institution’s top academic officials, including F. King Alexander, its president and chancellor. The American Association of University Professors, which has voiced concern that colleges elsewhere are denying due process to professors accused of sexual harassment, also has demanded that Louisiana State reconsider Ms. Buchanan’s firing.
