A California teacher lost her job for refusing to lie to students about biological sex.
Now Gavin Newsom's own university system is facing a federal lawsuit for doing the same thing to college students.
A federal court will now decide whether the nation's largest public university system has been running an unconstitutional speech regime all along.
How the University of California Pronoun Policy Punishes Students for Misgendering
The University of California doesn't just encourage students to use preferred pronouns.
It punishes them for refusing.
Under UC's Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment policy – a system-wide mandate covering all ten campuses and every enrolled student – calling a biological male by his biological sex qualifies as "verbal intimidation or hostility."
The policy bans the intentional or repeated use of a name or pronoun that doesn't match what a student claims to be.
The mandatory SHAPE training goes further still.
It instructs students that referring to someone by their birth name after they've adopted a new one is harassment – and warns that doing so "may be a form of sexual harassment."
A public university is threatening students with sexual harassment charges for stating a biological fact.
Defending Education Files First Amendment Lawsuit Against UC Over Compelled Speech
Defending Education filed suit against UC officials and California Governor Gavin Newsom in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
The group isn't asking UC to be nicer.
It's asking a federal court to declare the entire policy unconstitutional and block enforcement permanently.
Sarah Parshall Perry, Defending Education's vice president, was direct: "This case is bigger than pronouns."
The lawsuit targets two specific provisions: the Hostile-Environment Provision, which disciplines students for speech deemed "offensive" and "sufficiently severe, persistent or pervasive," and FAQ #14 of the SHAPE training, which codifies the pronoun mandate directly.
The legal road here is well-worn.
In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that no government official – "high or petty" – can compel a citizen to express a belief they oppose.
In 2021, the Sixth Circuit applied that principle to pronoun mandates, ruling for Shawnee State University philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether after the school punished him for declining to call a male student "she."
Meriwether won $400,000.
In 2023, the Virginia Supreme Court reinstated a wrongful termination suit by high school French teacher Peter Vlaming, fired for the same refusal.
Vlaming settled for $575,000.
Every court that has reached the merits of compelled pronoun speech has ruled the same way.
Gavin Newsom Named as Defendant in UC Pronoun Lawsuit Despite Calling Out Gender Ideology
The timing is devastating for Gavin Newsom.
Just months ago, Newsom sat down with CNN's Dana Bash and told his own party to be "less prone to spending a disproportionate amount of time on pronouns, identity politics."
Then his university system got hit with a federal lawsuit for running exactly the kind of policy he publicly said Democrats needed to abandon.
Newsom spent years signing and defending the laws that force California's public institutions to treat biological men as women.
Now he's a named defendant in a First Amendment case where the precedent has already been set.
The Supreme Court hasn't taken a compelled speech case from a public university yet.
But in March 2026, the Court issued a stay in Mirabelli v. Bonta – a California case challenging state policies that required schools to use students' preferred names and pronouns even against parental wishes – and found the challengers were likely to prevail.
The same California legal architecture underwrites what UC has been doing to its students.
Defending Education's lawsuit isn't a long shot.
It's a cleanup operation – and Newsom just handed them the keys.
Sources:
- Michael Gryboski, "University of California sued for mandating students use chosen pronouns," The Christian Post, June 19, 2026.
- "Defending Education Files Suit Against the University of California for Unconstitutional Speech Policies," Defending Education, June 18, 2026.
- Catherine Salgado, "Defending Education Sues University of California for Penalizing Non-Preferred Pronoun Use," PJ Media, June 18, 2026.
- "UC Policy Allegedly Punishes Students Over Pronoun Use, Gender Jokes," The Daily Caller, June 18, 2026.
- "Professor wins lawsuit against university over pronouns," Fox News, 2021.
- Mirabelli v. Bonta, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), Supreme Court of the United States, March 2, 2026.
- Lindsay Kornick, "Gov. Gavin Newsom says Democrats need more 'culturally normal' trans stance," Fox News, February 24, 2026.
