Dive Brief:
- A history professor in California won a federal court ruling Friday that temporarily blocks local community college officials from enforcing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility regulations against him over his scholarship or classroom instruction.
- Daymon Johnson, who works at Bakersfield College, is challenging California regulations stating that faculty members should employ teaching practices that reflect DEIA principles. He alleged these regulations violate his First Amendment rights by potentially forcing him to express viewpoints that he disagrees with.
- U.S. District Judge Kirk Sherriff agreed, writing that Johnson “credibly identified specific speech that he reasonably fears would be proscribed by the DEIA regulations.” However, Sheriff declined to block community college officials from requiring Johnson to complete DEIA training to serve on faculty screening committees.
Dive Insight:
In early 2023, the California Community College system amended regulations governing employee reviews to say that faculty members should “employ teaching, learning, and professional practices that reflect DEIA and anti-racist principles.” It also tied evaluation of employees to “DEIA-related competencies.”
Johnson sued shortly afterward, though Sheriff initially dismissed his case over a lack of standing. But Johnson brought his case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which revived some of his claims and remanded the case to the lower court.
In Friday’s ruling, Sherriff temporarily blocked Bakersfield College and Kern Community College District from enforcing the regulations over Johnson’s “scholarship or teaching.” Officials are also barred from applying to Johnson’s speech as a private citizen or his role as the faculty lead of the Renegade Institute for Liberty, a coalition of Bakersfield faculty that says it promotes free markets, civil discourse and intellectual diversity.
The Institute for Free Speech, which is representing Johnson, praised the decision.
“The First Amendment forbids California from demanding that community college professors conform their speech to an official government ideology — including so-called ‘DEI’ and anti-racist ideologies,” Alan Gura, lead counsel for Johnson, said in a statement this week.
Johnson is not the only professor who has sued over the regulations.
In August 2023, six professors sued the leaders of the California Community Colleges system, alleging the new policies violate their free speech rights and asking the judge overseeing the case to declare the regulations unconstitutional.
Sheriff, who also oversaw that case, dismissed their lawsuit in early 2025, ruling that the provisions didn’t mandate “what professors teach or how any such DEIA principles should be implemented.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group that represented those plaintiffs, said the lawsuit had achieved its intended outcome by spurring community college officials to promise they wouldn’t use the regulations to censor classroom instruction.
“As a result of our suit, the state and the district promised a federal judge they won’t interfere with our clients’ academic freedom and free speech rights,” FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner said in a statement at the time.
However, FIRE attorney Zach Silver added that the organization would be “watching like a hawk” to ensure they kept their word.
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