Melissa McCoul, a former Texas A&M University English lecturer, filed a federal lawsuit in Houston on Wednesday after she was fired last year following a controversy involving a classroom video tied to a lesson about gender identity. In the lawsuit, McCoul alleged the university violated her constitutional rights to free speech and due process by terminating her employment after the controversy drew political pressure, according to an Associated Press report.
The dispute traces to a classroom video that showed a student objecting to a children’s literature discussion about gender identity, the report said. Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, called for McCoul’s termination after seeing the video, which also prompted questions about whether the class discussion conducted in July complied with a Trump executive order on gender, according to the report.
The controversy that followed sharply criticized Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh. The report said Welsh later resigned, but did not offer a reason and did not mention the video in the announcement of his departure. After the firing, the university upheld McCoul’s termination even after two separate, independent university groups found that Texas A&M violated her due-process rights and did not have cause to end her employment, according to the Associated Press account of the case.
In a statement accompanying the filing, McCoul said, “Today I did something that would have been inconceivable a year ago – I’ve sued Texas A&M to hold it accountable for violations of my Constitutional rights to free speech and due process of law. There’s no satisfaction in doing this, only sadness,” the report said. The lawsuit named Welsh, interim president Tommy Williams, Texas A&M University System Chancellor Glenn Hegar and the Texas A&M System’s Board of Regents as defendants, according to the report.
Chris Bryan, vice chancellor for marketing and communications for the Texas A&M University System, said Wednesday that system officials were aware of the lawsuit but had not reviewed it. Bryan also said that because the case was pending litigation, the university system would not comment further but intended “to vigorously defend against the claims,” according to the report.
The lawsuit seeks reinstatement and monetary damages, the report said. McCoul argued in the complaint that Texas A&M’s stated explanations for her termination were inconsistent and that they were untrue, including by pushing back on claims that she failed to follow instructions to change course content to match the course catalog description. The report said McCoul described her course content as “100 percent aligned with the catalog description, course description.”
The Associated Press report said McCoul’s firing came after Hegar ordered an audit of courses across all 12 schools in the system. It also said McCoul’s lawsuit was filed less than a week after Texas A&M announced it was ending its women’s and gender studies program, changing syllabuses of hundreds of courses and canceling six classes as part of a new policy limiting how professors discuss certain race and gender topics, according to the report.
McCoul said she described teaching at Texas A&M as her “dream job” and said she had been at the university since 2017, the report said. In a separate statement, she said, “Despite how I was treated, I still love the institution, my former colleagues, and the students of A&M. I hope that this lawsuit will cause the University to think twice about treating others similarly,” according to the Associated Press report.
A series of other Texas university systems have also placed restrictions on classroom instruction or begun internal reviews of course offerings after a new state law, the report said. As the lawsuit proceeds, Texas A&M said it plans to defend the termination decision in court.