A new lawsuit says Chancellor Brandon Creighton and the Texas Tech Board of Regents built a system to police what professors can teach, and that it violates the First Amendment and discriminates against Black faculty and students.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lambda Legal and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP filed a lawsuit today against Texas Tech University System Chancellor Brandon Creighton and members of the Board of Regents over two system memoranda (\u201cthe Creighton Memoranda\u201d) issued in the past eight months. These vague directives result in an ongoing chilling effect that stifles debate, undermines students\u2019 education, and sidelines the\u00a0expertise\u00a0that university faculty have earned via years of education and\u00a0cutting-edge\u00a0research. The lawsuit,\u00a0AAUP v. Creighton,\u00a0was brought on behalf of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and its affiliate, Texas American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers (Texas AAUP-AFT).\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the center of the case are two memoranda Chancellor Creighton issued to university presidents across the system, one in December 2025 and a second in April 2026. Together they set up a mandatory review process: professors have to disclose whether their course materials touch on prohibited subject matter regarding race, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity, and if a course gets flagged, the instructor has to stop teaching that material until the Board of Regents rules on it. This has led to banning Plato\u2019s\u00a0Republic\u00a0in a philosophy course, prohibiting first year law students from receiving information about race related to\u00a0Dred\u00a0Scott v.\u00a0Sandford, and barring students at Texas Tech\u2019s health science center campuses from receiving medical education on treating racial and sexual minorities. Some professors say an AI tool was used to scan syllabi and\u00a0reading\u00a0lists for flagged content before any human review took place. The lawsuit asks the court to declare the memoranda unconstitutional and to block the university system from enforcing them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lawsuit brings three claims. First, it argues that the prohibitions in the memoranda amount to viewpoint discrimination that violates the First Amendment, since professors are barred from teaching certain ideas about race or gender but are free to teach other ideas about race and gender aligned with the memoranda\u2019s preferences. Second, it\u00a0argues\u00a0the policies in the memoranda are so vague that faculty\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0reasonably tell\u00a0what\u2019s\u00a0allowed and\u00a0what\u2019s\u00a0not, which violates due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. And lastly, it argues the memoranda\u00a0were\u00a0created and implemented, at least in part, to target Black faculty, harming the students that they teach and suppressing instruction about Black people\u2019s history and ongoing struggles with racial inequality. The complaint further highlights Creighton\u2019s decade in the Texas Senate\u00a0pushing similar restrictions that repeatedly\u00a0failed to\u00a0pass into law before he became chancellor and instead imposed them on the Texas Tech community administratively. The lawsuit asks the court to declare the memoranda unconstitutional and to block the university system from enforcing them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we step into the classroom, professors make\u00a0a commitment\u00a0to our students. Students and their families trust us to deliver a truthful and complete education that prepares them for whatever path they take after graduation. If allowed to stand, the Creighton Memoranda marks the end of free, thoughtful college curriculum developed by experts in the field,\u201d\u00a0said Dr. TJ Geiger, Vice President of the Texas AAUP-AFT chapter at Texas Tech University. \u201cThe world around us exists as it is, whether Chancellor Creighton likes it or not. Bending to politicians\u2019 preferred viewpoints over what the experts know to be true and right sets a dangerous precedent for higher education nationwide.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0academic oversight;\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0a chilling, top-down attack on the freedom to teach designed to intimidate faculty into silence. By imposing vague, arbitrary, and AI-driven censorship, the administration is replacing academic judgment with bureaucratic surveillance, undermining constitutionally protected\u00a0speech\u00a0and reducing higher education to a compliance exercise.\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0not education\u2014it\u2019s\u00a0ideological control,\u201d\u00a0said Todd\u00a0Wolfson, President of the American Association of University Professors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor over a year, higher education institutions across Texas have gone\u00a0above and beyond\u00a0what Texas and federal law requires in these restrictive curriculum crackdowns. In doing so, they satisfy politicians while failing their students and violating the rights of faculty,\u201d\u00a0said Dr. Teresa Klein, President of Texas AAUP-AFT. \u201cThis lawsuit is our commitment to Texas AAUP-AFT members that we will do everything in our power to defend them from these dangerous policies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPublic universities should be places where faculty can teach, research, and engage students without fear that political ideology will determine which ideas are permitted in the classroom,\u201d\u00a0said Antonio L. Ingram II, Senior Counsel at the Legal Defense Fund. \u201cThe vague Creighton Memoranda undermine the First Amendment rights of faculty and fall hardest on Black faculty and others whose scholarship, lived experiences, and\u00a0expertise\u00a0are too often singled out for scrutiny and exclusion. The First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment\u2019s Equal Protection Clause work together to safeguard both freedom of expression and equal treatment under the law. Every faculty member, including Black and LGBTQ+ faculty, deserves the freedom to teach truthfully without fear of being targeted because of their identity or the perspectives they bring to the classroom. We will fight to make Texas Tech inclusive for all Texans.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cChancellor Creighton is trying to do through fiat what he couldn\u2019t accomplish in the Texas legislature: erase the history, identities, and lived experiences of LGBTQ people and people of color from the classroom,\u201d\u00a0said Nicholas\u00a0Hite,\u00a0Senior Attorney and McDonald\/Wright Distinguished Counsel\u00a0at Lambda Legal.\u00a0\u201cFaculty at Texas Tech\u00a0are being barred from teaching that gay and bisexual men were persecuted during the Holocaust, medical students pulled out of exam rooms rather than learn to treat transgender patients, and an entire Women\u2019s and Gender Studies program shuttered by administrative decree. That is viewpoint discrimination, and\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0unconstitutional. Lambda Legal is asking the court to put a stop to it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis new policy claims to combat \u2018prejudice,\u2019 but its actual goal is to expel diverse viewpoints from the classroom,\u201d\u00a0said Leena Charlton, an attorney with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.\u00a0\u201cThe policy prevents important ideas from even being discussed or included in course work, regardless of whether professors are \u2018promoting or advocating for\u2019 them.\u202f As a result, the policy\u2019s ulterior motive to rewrite history is made plain.\u00a0Eliminating\u00a0the discussion of true facts and censoring books that have been critical to the evolution of human thought is not protecting students,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0indoctrination in the form of a thought and history ban\u2013and it violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. We are honored to\u00a0represent\u00a0the university professors in combatting this wrongheaded attack on the integrity of higher education.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Plaintiffs allege that the fallout has reached well beyond any one classroom and does not follow any consistent pattern. Similar material\u00a0submitted\u00a0by different professors has been approved in one department and rejected in another, with insufficient explanation of what separated the two outcomes. Faculty have been asked to cut specific words and phrases from their syllabi without knowing whether the underlying ideas are still allowed, and even the university administrators responsible for enforcing the policy have, at points, been unable to explain what it requires. For professors needing to plan a\u00a0semester months\u00a0in advance, that uncertainty has pushed many to cut more than the rules technically demand, just to stay safe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Texas Tech administrators reviewed\u00a0roughly 8,500\u00a0courses at Texas Tech University alone by early May 2026. About 500 went to the Board of Regents\u2019 Academic, Clinical, and Student Affairs Committee for review. Of those, dozens were\u00a0modified\u00a0or had material\u00a0removed\u2501some\u00a0after department chairs, deans, and provosts had already recommended the material stay in place.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
Public universities have long\u00a0provided an opportunity for students\u00a0to\u00a0encounter\u00a0the widest possible range of ideas, histories, and disciplines, often for the first time. That goal is only possible if the material in front of them reflects the world as it\u00a0actually is, not a version filtered by whomever happens to hold power at a given moment. Lambda Legal, LDF, and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP are asking the court to give that space back to the faculty, students, and patients across the Texas Tech System who rely on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Read the full complaint: https:\/\/lambdalegal.org\/legal_document\/aaup_tx_20260708_complaint\/<\/a><\/p>\n