9th Circuit Protects Professor’s First Amendment Right To Make Fun Of Land Acknowledgments

[Kamaji]

9th Circuit Protects Professor’s First Amendment Right To Make Fun Of Land Acknowledgments

By: Breccan F. Thies
December 19, 2025

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled Friday that the University of Washington is not allowed to punish a professor for making fun of the “land acknowledgments” they tried to force on their staff.

The win at the circuit level comes after the district court sided with the school.

“A public university investigated, reprimanded, and threatened to discipline a professor for contentious statements he made in a class syllabus. The statements, which mocked the university’s model syllabus statement on an issue of public concern, caused offense in the university community,” Judge Danial Bress, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote in the majority opinion. “Yet debate and disagreement are hallmarks of higher education. Student discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval. But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor. We hold that the university’s actions toward the professor violated his First Amendment rights.”

The court found that the school subjected computer science professor Stuart Reges to punitive employment actions and reprimand, based entirely on his speech disagreeing with their policy.

In 2019, when schools, corporations, politicians, and many others were partaking in their performative (and utterly embarrassing) “racial reckoning” overtures, the University of Washington adopted a policy recommending professors put a “land acknowledgment” on their course syllabi.

“Land acknowledgments” are meant to falsely state that, in actuality, Europeans did not build any of the United States of America, and that the land is still owned by the American Indian tribes that were once there.

The school even offered model language: “The University of Washington 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 took the opportunity to point out how absurd that statement, while noting that none of those tribes can claim any land, because they did not build anything close to civilization on it.

“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’ 2022 version of the statement in his syllabus read.

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Source:  https://thefederalist.com/2025/12/19/9th-circuit-protects-professors-first-amendment-right-to-make-fun-of-land-acknowledgments/

[Kamaji]

Sometimes even the 9th Circus gets the correct result.

[Free Vulcan]

  to the professor for standing up to Marxist deconstructionism.

[Kamaji]

to the professor for standing up to Marxist deconstructionism.

Yup.  That takes a lot of courage.

[verga]

So the school wanted the faculty to acknowledge that they purchased the land from from a development group that took if from the last indigenous indian tribe to occupy it. That stole it or conquered it from another indigenous tribe, all the way back to those that crossed the land bridge, or frozen sea and migrated south from there.

[mountaineer]

Stunning acknowledgment of the Constitution by the 9th Circus.

[Kamaji]

Stunning acknowledgment of the Constitution by the 9th Circus.

Yes.

[Canuck Conservative]

You still see this now before the start of any sports event in the West/Northwest -

Each team's arena publicly apologizing (via the PA system) to the natives for "being on their traditional land"