Kentucky AG leads 13-state push asking the Supreme Court to limit professors' on-the-job speech rights

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Nov. 10) — Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that public university professors get no more free speech protection on the job than any other state employee, and he's using a University of Kentucky case to make the point.

Coleman and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall organized a brief filed Monday on behalf of 13 Republican-led states, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. The other states are Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas, according to Jewish Insider.

The brief isn't part of any Kentucky lawsuit. It backs Florida's request for the high court to take up a challenge to the state's "Stop W.O.K.E. Act," which limits how instructors at public colleges can teach certain race and gender topics. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July that the law violates the First Amendment.

The states argue professors keep their full rights when they speak as private citizens, but not when they're speaking in their role as taxpayer-funded teachers. "Public university professors are citizens, not sovereign citizens," the brief says, according to the Herald-Leader.

As an example, the brief points to UK law professor Ramsi Woodcock. The university barred him from teaching in July 2025 after comments about Israel and the war in Gaza and is still investigating whether he made them in his official capacity. Woodcock has sued UK, saying his remarks were protected and weren't antisemitic. A federal district court in Kentucky has upheld the suspension, Jewish Insider reported.

Coleman told Jewish Insider the issue is personal to him and said professors "don't have, by virtue of being in academia, some sort of extra-constitutional sacrosanct ability" to voice their views. His office said the brief is meant to keep professors from "hiding behind 'academic freedom'" when they make antisemitic remarks.