Court orders Oklahoma university to reinstate transgender professor fired over gender identity

The Southeastern Oklahoma State University must reinstate with tenure a transgender professor who was fired in 2011 after a school official said that her “lifestyle” offended him, an appeals court ruled Monday.

In a 55-page decision, a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected a challenge to a 2017 verdict in favor of Rachel Tudor, an English professor who had sued the university claiming that she was denied tenure — and ultimately fired — because of her gender identity.

Tudor, who’s a member of the Chickasaw Nation, began working for the university in 2004 as an assistant professor in the English department.

After she came out as trans and began living her life as a woman in 2007, she said that a person who worked at the university’s human resources department called her to say that the university’s VP for academic affairs, Douglas McMillan, had asked whether Tudor could be fired because her “transgender lifestyle” offended his religious beliefs, the Tulsa World reported.

Even though she had been recommended for a promotion by a committee, Tudor was denied tenure in the fall of 2009, according to court records. And because she didn’t obtain tenure, she was fired following the 2010-11 academic year.

In 2015, the U.S. Justice Department sued the university on Tudor’s behalf, after she claimed that the school had discriminated against her on the basis of her sex and later retaliated against her, when she complained about the discrimination.

In 2017 a federal jury found that Southeastern wrongfully denied her tenure and awarded the professor $1.16 million. The following year, U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron in Oklahoma City lowered the amount to about $300,000, citing caps on damages under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Tudor requested more than $2 million in front pay, an amount that would reflect her lost future earnings, but the judge awarded her around $60,000.

The judge also denied her bid to be reinstated, after the university claimed that some members of the faculty were against her return.

The school appealed the verdict. Tudor appealed the reinstatement denial, as well as the calculation of the front pay.

On Monday, the appellate court ruled in her favor.

Tudor is “looking forward to being the first tenured Native American professor in her department in the 100-plus year history of the Native American-serving institution that is Southeastern Oklahoma State University,” the professor said in a statement attributed to her, according to Tulsa World.

“As injurious as the sex discrimination and retaliation were to Dr. Tudor, she did not consider it merely personal. Rather, she was a symbol to those who discriminated against her. They wanted to create an environment where certain views and certain people are punished to create fear and shame instead of self-confidence and opportunity for all,” the statement added.