The agreement comes in the wake of a Ninth Circuit ruling that the University of Washington violated Stuart Reges’ First Amendment rights by treating his dissent as an unacceptable disturbance.
Stuart Reges, a computer science professor at the University of Washington who was reprimanded in 2022 and investigated for mocking a land acknowledgment, secured a $600,000 settlement last week as part of resolving his First Amendment lawsuit. However, he did not receive an apology or an admission of fault from the Seattle campus, whose spokesman continues to insist that the university acted properly.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit weighed in last December, in a fractured three-judge decision, finding that UW officials violated Reges’ First Amendment rights by foregrounding a lengthy inquiry that spanned nearly a year and denying him a merit pay increase on the basis of an alleged breach of the university’s vague anti-harassment policy. In the panel’s ruling in Reges v. Cauce, the state university was found to have retaliated against protected speech and engaged in viewpoint discrimination, which is inherently presumptively unconstitutional.
“They broke the law, but refuse to admit it,” Reges wrote in the New York Post. “I am astonished that the university still contends that it acted appropriately.”
The investigation stemmed from a line Reges included in the syllabus of the introductory computer science course he has taught for more than twenty years: “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.” Reges, a critic of DEI policies, was alluding to John Locke while poking fun at a university-adopted syllabus statement that “acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.”
Reges viewed the land acknowledgment as part of a DEI agenda that “treats some groups of students as more worthy of recognition and welcome than others based on race or other immutable characteristics.” He believed it was inappropriate to include such a “political statement” in his syllabus and questioned its factual basis, noting that “much of the land currently occupied by UW was densely forested before it was cleared to make way for the campus.” He rejected the implication that “UW’s presence is somehow illegitimate, shameful, morally wrong, or unlawful,” and called the recommended statement “an empty, performative act of moralism.”
UW administrators characterized Reges’ dissent as intolerable, arguing that it caused unacceptable “disruption” at the university. The Ninth Circuit did not accept that rationale. “Student discomfort with a professor’s views can spur discussion and disapproval,” wrote Judge Daniel A. Bress, a Donald Trump appointee, in an opinion joined by Judge Milan D. Smith Jr., who had been nominated by George W. Bush. “But this discomfort is not a justification for the university to retaliate against the professor. We hold that the university’s actions toward the professor violated his First Amendment rights.”
Despite the university’s continued defense of its actions, the settlement acknowledges Reges’ right to express his views about land acknowledgments. It explicitly permits him to incorporate his parody into future syllabi and promises that the university will not offer “competing or ‘shadow’ sections of his courses” for students offended by it. It also commits to forswearing “further adverse employment action” against Reges, “including but not limited to pursuing any investigation” or “withholding future salary increases.”
The university further undermined its stance on Reges’ First Amendment claims by revising its “Nondiscrimination and Affirmative Action” policy, which administrators had cited as the primary justification for investigating him while the case was pending. The policy’s official aim, as stated in UW’s Executive Order 31 (EO-31), was to foster an environment free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.
EO-31 authorized the university to discipline faculty for conduct deemed unacceptable or inappropriate, even if that conduct did not reach the level of unlawful discrimination, harassment, or retaliation. On July 23, 2025, three years after Reges filed his suit, UW rescinded EO-31 and replaced it with EO-81, which states that discriminatory harassment must have “the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work or academic performance” or be “sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive” to create an obviously intimidating, hostile, or offensive work or learning environment.
That revision makes it hard to reconcile with the university’s claim that it acted appropriately. If that claim were accurate, there would have been no need to narrow the policy Reges allegedly violated. And although the university had argued that the disruption he caused justified its investigation, it is now prepared to tolerate his dissent, which administrators had previously described as having created a “toxic environment” with a “significant impact” on the morale and learning of Native American students, calling the level of disruption “extraordinary.”
The settlement, Reges stated in a press release last Thursday, will serve as a reminder to public universities that they must honor the First Amendment rights of students, faculty, and staff. “I hope my protest can help reverse a decade-long trend toward ideological conformity in academia and persuade them to teach students how to cope with disagreement rather than shielding them from controversial ideas. Only then can we begin to mend the deep divides we face today.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which represented Reges, cautions that the settlement should not be interpreted as a victory for any particular stance on DEI or land acknowledgments. “Reasonable people can disagree about the value of land acknowledgments,” FIRE attorney Gabe Walters said. “What remains non-negotiable is academic freedom. Today’s settlement vindicates Reges’s right to voice his own opinion rather than toeing the university’s line. UW learned a hard lesson: ignoring the First Amendment can be costly. Professors’ livelihoods should not hinge on student or administrator outrage, and this ruling will help shield other professors nationwide.”
