Two faculty organizations sued the Texas Tech University System on Wednesday, alleging Chancellor Brandon Creighton's new curriculum rules violate professors' constitutional rights by restricting how they can teach topics involving race, gender identity and sexual orientation.
The lawsuit challenges two memoranda issued by Creighton — the first in December and the second in April — which directed Texas Tech campuses to eliminate academic programs centered on sexual orientation or gender identity. Campuses were also instructed to remove those topics from core undergraduate courses with limited exceptions. The policies include additional prohibitions or restrictions around instruction related to systemic racism, racial privilege and oppression.
According to court records, Chancellor Creighton’s policies have led professors across the five-campus Texas Tech system to remove or alter lessons on topics including Black history, LGBTQ+ issues, constitutional law, immigration and medical care for transgender patients.
“Proponents of the agenda can't change the reality of the world outside the campus walls, so they're trying to distort how that reality is taught on Texas Tech campuses,” said Nicholas Hite, an attorney representing the Texas American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors.
While Creighton has argued the new requirements would help students prepare for the workforce, faculty groups argue the policies amount to viewpoint discrimination, are unconstitutionally vague and intentionally discriminate against certain faculty members.
The complaint also alleges one professor was instructed to remove the word "systemic" from a syllabus because it could raise concerns with the Texas Tech Board of Regents. Under the policies, faculty were required to submit course materials covering those topics for review and approval by the university system’s regents.
Lisa Limeri, an executive committee member of American Association of University Professors, left her job at Texas Tech last month after teaching biology for five years. She told The Texas Newsroom the decision was driven entirely "because of the censorship.”
“It is hard to overstate the enormous negative impacts," Limeri said of the policy changes. “Many faculty are opting to leave out and not teach many topics that they normally would teach students because they cannot get a clear answer on whether it is allowed.”
Limeri believes the result is that students are receiving “partial, incomplete, censored education in pretty much every field.”
“This censorship robs students of learning from the expertise of faculty with decades of advanced training in their fields,” Limeri said.
A spokesperson for Texas Tech didn’t immediately respond to The Texas Newsroom’s request for comment on Wednesday. In December, during an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, Creighton described some of the policy changes as “a continuum of common sense.”
Creighton took over as Texas Tech chancellor late last year after serving as a Republican state senator, where he led the Senate's higher education committee. He also authored Senate Bill 37, a 2025 law expanding the authority of governor-appointed university regents over academic programs and curriculum.
The lawsuit argues Creighton's curriculum directives revive provisions from an early version of SB 37 that would’ve required universities to eliminate curriculum teaching concepts like "identity politics" or theories that “systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege is inherent in the institutions of the United States.” Those provisions were removed before the bill became law.
“What he failed to do to hurt Black communities in the Texas Senate, he is now doing in a Texas Tech system,” said Antonio Ingram, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
The faculty groups are asking a federal judge to declare Creighton's memoranda unconstitutional and block their enforcement.
