Faculty groups sued Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton and the university system’s regents Wednesday, asking a federal judge in El Paso to block classroom restrictions they say have censored professors who teach about race, gender identity and sexual orientation and intentionally discriminated against Black faculty.
The lawsuit, brought by the Texas American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers and the national American Association of University Professors, challenges two memos Creighton issued after becoming chancellor last year.
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The groups argue the restrictions outlined in the memos violate the First Amendment by allowing Texas Tech officials to suppress viewpoints they dislike, violate the Fourteenth Amendment by leaving professors unsure what they can teach without being disciplined and discriminate against Black faculty by singling out instruction about Black history, racial inequality and efforts to remedy it.
Creighton’s first memo, issued Dec. 1, told faculty they could face discipline if they did not comply with new limits on course content involving race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. It required faculty to submit course material related to those topics for regents to review and approve.
A second memo, issued April 9, went further, ordering the phase-out of academic programs centered on sexual orientation and gender identity and requiring professors in core and lower-level undergraduate courses to use alternate materials if readings, assignments or lectures included those topics.
The memo said some material could still be taught if needed for patient care, professional credentials or advanced coursework, but the lawsuit argues those exceptions were applied inconsistently.
The policies apply across the five-institution system, which includes Texas Tech University, two health sciences centers, Angelo State University and Midwestern State University.
The complaint includes new accounts of how the restrictions have been applied. It alleges a Texas Tech Health Sciences Center professor in Lubbock was told medical students could not participate in or observe care for transgender patients, even when those patients sought treatment for unrelated conditions such as hypertension, migraines or cancer. It also says a professor was told a Holocaust course would have to leave the core curriculum if it included instruction on gay and bisexual victims of the Nazis, and that regents barred professors from teaching Plato’s Republic and Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ National Book Award-winning book about racism in America.
The complaint also alleges an instructor at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center El Paso was told to not use the word “disparity” in class, affecting their ability to adequately teach students because El Paso County residents have a higher prevalence of diabetes. In addition, women along the Texas-Mexico border have a higher rate of cervical cancer mortality, children are hospitalized more for asthma in border counties, and the pregnancy-related mortality rate among Black women in Texas is 2.5 times higher than that of white women, according to the complaint.
One of the medical-training allegations underscores the lawsuit’s claim that Texas Tech’s stated exceptions were confusing and inconsistently applied. Creighton’s memos said some material could still be taught when needed for patient care or professional credentials. But the complaint says the Lubbock professor was initially required to remove material about transgender and intersex patients from a medical school course, even though the professor considered it vital to the course and necessary for medical certification exams. The professor was later told medical students could treat transgender patients during third- and fourth-year clinical rotations, according to the complaint, but only after some students’ rotations had already passed.
The groups are asking a judge to declare Creighton’s memos unconstitutional and block the system from enforcing them or any similar policy. The lawsuit, saying faculty members have already had to certify compliance for summer and fall courses, argues the restrictions will continue to harm them as well as deprive students of instruction they would otherwise receive.
A Texas Tech System spokeswoman rejected the lawsuit’s allegations.
“Our commitment to academic integrity and the First Amendment rights of our students will not be distracted by lawsuits as we continue to deliver rigorous academic programs, relevant coursework and groundbreaking research,” spokeswoman Erin Wilson said in a statement.
Wilson also pushed back on several allegations in the complaint. Teaching about civil rights and historical events, including Nazi crimes, is permitted and instructors are not required to redact or remove works when sexual orientation or gender identity appears in adopted, industry-standard text or as an incidental reference, she said.
The board of regents also has not altered or rejected any course at Texas Tech’s health sciences centers, she said.
Creighton has previously defended the restrictions as necessary to comply with state and federal law and ensure students are provided with “degrees of value.”
In a December interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education cited in the complaint, Creighton said Texas Tech works to send a message that its “door is open to every walk of life” and said the restrictions were meant to foster “diversity of viewpoint.” Asked whether restricting teaching on gender identity, sexuality and race helped achieve that, Creighton said yes and described the guidance as a “continuum of common sense.”
Creighton, a former Republican state senator, became chancellor in November. In the Senate, he chaired the Higher Education Committee and authored Senate Bill 37, a 2025 law that gave governor-appointed regents more authority over curriculum. Creighton’s Dec. 1 memo described Texas Tech’s course review as the “first step” in implementing that law.
The lawsuit argues Creighton’s memos go beyond what lawmakers ultimately passed. An earlier version of SB 37 would have required regents to eliminate curriculum that taught “identity politics” or was based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression or privilege are inherent in the U.S. or Texas institutions. That language did not become part of the law, but the faculty groups argue Creighton later imposed those restrictions after becoming chancellor.
The complaint points to his broader record as a lawmaker to support its claim that the memos were motivated, at least in part, by racial discrimination. It says that after the George Floyd protests, Creighton opposed efforts to remove Confederate monuments and symbols, backed unsuccessful restrictions on teaching called critical race theory at public universities and colleges and authored Senate Bill 17, the state’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs in higher education.
“Chancellor Creighton is trying to do through fiat what he couldn’t accomplish in the Texas legislature: erase the history, identities and lived experiences of LGBTQ people and people of color from the classroom,” said Nicholas Hite, senior attorney at Lambda Legal.
The faculty groups are represented by Lambda Legal, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.
Texas Tech is not the only Texas university system to restrict course content involving race, gender identity or sexual orientation. Texas A&M University System regents approved a similar policy in November, after a viral recording showed a student confronting a Texas A&M professor over gender identity content in a children’s literature class. That controversy led to the professor’s firing, the removal of two college leaders from their administrative roles and the resignation of the university president as well as a systemwide course audit.
The A&M policy, which was approved before Creighton’s memos, says no system academic course may advocate “race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” unless the course and relevant materials are approved in advance by the university president. It also says faculty may not teach material inconsistent with a course’s approved syllabus.
Asked why the groups sued Texas Tech and not Texas A&M, Texas AAUP-AFT President Teresa Klein said the organizations are focused on Texas Tech for now but “will be exploring everything.”
Antonio Ingram II, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said Texas Tech represents “one of the most egregious forms of censorship we’ve seen nationwide,” pointing to restrictions on graduate student research and the closure of entire departments. A favorable ruling could affect other systems, including Texas A&M and the University of Texas System, though additional lawsuits might still be needed, he said.
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
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