In Stern v. Roberts, a jury just held that Auburn University had retaliated against Prof. Michael Stern, a tenured economics professor, based on his speech; the jury awarded $145K in compensatory damages and $500K in punitive damages. Here are the factual allegations from the earlier opinion denying summary judgment:
In 1964, Marvin Pickering, a public high school teacher in Will County, Illinois, wrote a letter to his local newspaper's editor, criticizing the school board's allocation of funding for athletic programs to the detriment of academic integrity. That unpopular letter got him fired but ultimately won him and all public employees First Amendment freedoms. See Pickering v. Bd. of Educ. of Twp. High Sch. Dist. 205 (1968).
Fast forward a half century later to Lee County, Alabama, where Plaintiff Michael L. Stern, Ph.D.—a tenured economics professor at Auburn University—had gained a reputation as a vocal critic of the College of Liberal Arts' public administration major for its disproportionate number of scholarship student-athletes, particularly those in the football program. Dr. Stern believed that the university was behind the clustering of student-athletes into this athletic-friendly major and that its athletic department had fought to retain the major against its recommended closure…. Dr. Stern's criticism attacking the integrity of the public administration major and the Auburn athletic program was unpopular among university administrators, including Defendants.
In May 2018, Dr. Stern was removed as chair of the Department of Economics, a position he had held since 2010. His removal as chair was the last straw in what Dr. Stern categorizes as a campaign of harassment by university officials to discourage him from exercising his First Amendment rights to speak out against what he discerned was a scandalous academic major protecting star athletes….
