Texas Tech seal on the the university’s campus in Lubbock.
Dallas Morning News
Two faculty groups filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to block the Texas Tech University System from implementing its policies on how professors can discuss race, gender and sexual orientation in the classroom.
The suit, which marks a major legal challenge against a Texas university system over increased restrictions on what can be taught, focuses on two memos issued by Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton in the last academic year.
One memo, sent in December, banned content that advocates for one race or sex as “inherently superior to another” and prohibited faculty from teaching that there are more than two sexes. The second memo, sent in April, ordered universities to cut all academic degrees “centered on” sexual orientation and gender identity.
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The two groups, the national American Association of University Professors and its Texas chapter, argue Creighton’s policies violate their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
Related: Texas Tech System restricts classroom teachings about transgender, nonbinary identities
The lawsuit names Creighton, a former Republican lawmaker, as a defendant, as well as the nine members of the system’s Board of Regents. Representatives from the Texas Tech University System did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chancellor Brandon Creighton speaks during a Texas Tech University System Board of Regents meeting at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Dallas Campus on Feb. 26, 2026.
Elias Valverde II/Dallas Morning News
“This case presents an extraordinary system of censorship in higher education,” the suit reads, “in which professors in the Texas Tech University System are prohibited from teaching the most basic scholarship, while at the same time not fully comprehending the contours of prohibitions that place them under threat of losing their employment and livelihood.”
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The groups in the lawsuit say the system’s policies “suppress” professors’ constitutionally protected speech and “obscure documented history, facts and theories.”
In one instance, a law professor was blocked from teaching information about race related to the landmark Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford, which ruled that Black people were not U.S. citizens, according to the filing. The lawsuit against Texas Tech also says that medical faculty have been instructed to remove content about treating transgender patients and racial minorities. Professors are not named in the filing.
Related: Republicans are remaking Texas’ public universities. Some professors are leaving
The lawsuit argues that Creighton’s policies violate professors’ Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process because its language is “so vague and ambiguous” that they are “unable to discern what is, and is not, permissible.” That ambiguity, the filing says, has led to a chilling of speech.
The groups also allege that Creighton’s policies intentionally discriminate against Black professors, saying that the restrictions prohibit “any meaningful discussion about past and present impacts of racial discrimination on Black people in Texas.”
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Creighton has said the new policies are necessary to comply with “state and federal law, Board of Regents policy, and Chancellor directives.” There is no state law that explicitly bans teaching or discussion of race, gender identity and sexual orientation in Texas’ public universities.
The restrictions applied to the system’s five institutions — Angelo State University, Midwestern State University, Texas Tech University, and two health sciences centers — which serve around 64,000 students. The university, which is headquartered in Lubbock, has multiple campuses across North Texas, including a health sciences center in Dallas’ medical district.
The Texas Tech University System Board of Regents conducts a meeting at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Dallas Campus on Feb. 26, 2026, in Dallas.
Elias Valverde II/Dallas Morning News
Creighton has also framed the policies as part of a review of what students are taught under Senate Bill 37, a new state law that gives regents more control over Texas’ public universities, according to the memo. The law, which was authored by Creighton before he became Texas Tech’s chancellor, requires regents review the courses students have to take to graduate to ensure they are “foundational and fundamental” and prepare students for the workforce.
Lawyers representing the two groups say they hope that a ruling in their favor could create precedent to block similar policies at other Texas public universities, such as the Texas A&M System.
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“The Texas Tech system is one of the most egregious forms of censorship we’ve seen nationwide,” said Antonio Ingram, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, one of the groups representing faculty in the suit, at a press conference Wednesday. “What we see in Texas Tech is an attempt to turn universities into propaganda machines, and we have to stop this before it spreads to other parts of the country.”
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