By Michael Gryboski, Editor Friday, June 19, 2026
Sharon McCutcheon/Unsplash
A parental rights advocacy group is suing the University of California for forcing students to use the chosen pronouns of trans-identified individuals.
Defending Education filed the complaint on Thursday against UC officials and California Gov. Gavin Newsom in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Southern Division.
The group accuses UC of violating students’ constitutional rights through its “Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment” policy, which, in the frequently-asked-questions section, bans the “intentional or repeated use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with [an] individual’s gender identity (i.e., misgendering).”
The challenged policy also includes a “Hostile-Environment Provision” that the lawsuit says “disciplines students who engage in ‘unwelcome … sex-based conduct’ that is ‘offensive’ and ‘sufficiently severe, persistent or pervasive that’ it ‘limits’ or ‘interferes with a person’s’ educational experience.”
“Defending Education has members who attend UC System schools and whose protected speech is chilled by the SVSH Policy. The Hostile-Environment Provision and FAQ #14 should be declared unconstitutional and Defendants should be enjoined from enforcing them,” reads the lawsuit.
“Whether a public university is compelling students to use a preferred pronoun, contrary to sex, or prohibiting students from using preferred pronouns, contrary to sex, the university is transgressing the First Amendment.”
The Christian Post reached out to the University of California for this story. A spokesperson responded Thursday to say they have “not been served with the complaint and will review and respond in court as appropriate.”
In a statement, Defending Education declared that the “protection of First Amendment freedoms is nowhere more vital than in American institutions of higher education.”
“In fact, the college classroom has been referred to by the U.S. Supreme Court as the ‘marketplace of ideas,’” the group stated. “But marketplaces of ideas wither without open discourse and debate matters of gender identity and the fixed nature of biological sex.”
“Speech codes like those in UC’s SVSH policy impose vague, overbroad, content- and often viewpoint-based restrictions on speech. And, as the Supreme Court has routinely confirmed, they are unconstitutional.”
Last year, UC garnered headlines for a Sexual Harassment, Anti-Discrimination, Prevention and Education (SHAPE) program, that was adopted at many of its campuses. The mandatory student training program has the stated goal of “maintaining an environment in which all of us can thrive in a community that is free of discrimination and harassment, including sexual harassment and sexual violence.”
“Federal and state law, as well as University policy, require that all new and returning students receive education about discrimination and harassment prevention once per Academic Year,” the university said.
“Students help to shape this community, and we hope that all members of the community take a proactive role in creating a welcoming campus environment for everyone.”
The online training and testing modules garnered criticism for requiring that, among other things, students use pronouns of trans-identified individuals that do not match their sex and allow them to use bathrooms and other sex-segregated facilities that are inconsistent with their sex.
Spencer Brown, the chief communications officer for the conservative youth organization Young America’s Foundation, said in a statement last year that he believed university officials “have shredded their institution’s ability to call itself a place of higher education by giving in to the radical Left’s gender ideology and endangering female students.”
“It is not sexual harassment to require students to use the restroom, locker room, or other facility that corresponds with their biological sex,” Brown continued, “but it is egregious to require female students to use bathrooms with biological men and force all students to agree that such a policy is normal or safe.”