The University of Central Florida's outrage at a faculty member's assertion "Black privilege is real" could end up putting its top administrators at the mercy of a jury, sending a warning to campus bureaucrats nationwide not to overreact to minority views.

U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza denied qualified immunity to President Alexander Cartwright, Provost Michael Johnson, former College of Sciences Dean Tosha Dupras and former Office of Institutional Equity Director Nancy Myers in a First Amendment retaliation lawsuit by professor Charles Negy, leaving them open to personal liability.

"Defendants had ample time to make reasoned, thoughtful decisions regarding how they wished to proceed with the investigation" against Negy for his tweets in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, and "the benefit of making those decisions with counsel," yet fired the tenured psychology professor anyway, Mendoza wrote.

He denied them summary judgment on Negy's demand for punitive damages, as a jury may find they "acted with reckless or callous indifference" to his constitutional rights.

Mendoza spared professor Kent Butler, then-chief equity, diversity, and inclusion officer, because he could not "effectuate" Negy's firing but only allegedly solicited complaints against him, issuing summary judgment in Butler's favor.

Myers got a half-victory, as Negy had also alleged she violated his free speech by investigating his in-class comments as "discriminatory harassment." Judge Mendoza granted her immunity because the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had not created a "clearly established" right shielding academic freedom from such investigations.

'Nonsensical' distinctions between protected and unprotected speech

It's one of the worst First Amendment losses for public university administrators in recent years, perhaps matched only by University of Iowa officials twice losing qualified immunity months apart in 2021 for anti-Christian bias in the 8th Circuit.

"Prof. Negy’s case was chilling. Perhaps the worst I ever saw," Cornell law professor William Jacobson, whose Equal Protection Project files civil rights complaints against colleges for race-based treatment, wrote at his website Legal Insurrection.

"He was maligned and tormented relentlessly by students, internet mobs, and importantly, UCF administrators." who subjected him to an "8-month expansive investigation, delving back decades to create a pretext to fire him, which they did."

A handful of student complaints snowballed as administrators solicited further complaints and investigated Negy's classroom speech, conducting 300 interviews for a 244-page report, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Vice President Adam Goldstein, whose former colleague Samantha Harris represents Negy, wrote last week.

The report drew "nonsensical lines" between protected speech – "that girl scouts preserve their virginity," "Jesus was schizophrenic" and "Islam is cruel and not a religion of peace" – and unprotected speech – "women are attracted to men with money," "Jesus did not come into the world to die for everyone’s sins" and Islam "is a toxic mythology," Goldstein wrote.

"Judge Mendoza formally recognized what was obvious from the very beginning: UCF knew or should have known that what it was doing violated the First Amendment, but they went ahead and did it anyway," the FIRE executive said.

The ruling also draws unwanted attention to the institutions now employing two of the UCF administrators facing personal liability from a jury.

Dupras became dean of the Texas Tech College of Arts and Sciences two months after Negy's reinstatement to UCF in 2022, which included back pay, as a result of arbitration.

Myers left UCF last summer for Yale University to become director of its University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, which has a reputation with due-process advocates as a kangaroo court for its pro-accuser policies and destruction of notes from proceedings.

The Connecticut Supreme Court determined the committee was not "quasi-judicial" in a 2023 ruling denying a rape accuser "absolute immunity" in a high-profile defamation lawsuit by student Saifullah Khan, who beat her allegations in a criminal court yet was expelled by Yale anyway. Khan is now suing Yale for $110 million.

UCF, Texas Tech and Yale did not respond to queries for their defendants' response to the ruling.

What if blacks acted like Asian Americans 'on average'?

Negy's tweets inflamed what dry tinder remained in the fiery late spring 2020, amid COVID-19 lockdowns and George Floyd-triggered riots, sparking the hashtag #UCFfirehim. Mendoza's ruling quotes two that Negy later deleted. 

"Black privilege is real. Besides affirm. action, special scholarships and other set asides, being shielded from legitimate criticism is a privilege," Negy wrote. "But as a group, they’re missing out on much needed feedback."

"Sincere question: If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming ‘systematic racism’ exists?" he asked rhetorically.

He remains active on X today, promoting his pre-controversy book White Shaming: Bullying based on Prejudice, Virtue-Signaling, and Ignorance, which notes his research focuses on "the psychological well-being of ethnic and sexual minorities."

Jury must answer 'why act now?'

Judge Mendoza found that Cartwright, Dupras and Johnson were unambiguously "decisionmakers" in Negy's firing and a jury could find Myers was too, under the "cat's paw" legal liability theory, for her allegedly "biased" investigation and recommendation.

Negy alleged "Myers cherrypicked from the evidence," provided only "the nature of the allegations" but not the details of each complaint in violation of her office's policy, and wrongly deemed he gave "false information" when she asked him to remember "classroom occurrences that spanned over 15 years.

Fewer than half of the witness statements her office relied on – its own summaries – were "reviewed and signed" by the witnesses, and Myers never wrote down her supposed "independent credibility assessment for the witness statements," Mendoza wrote.

Despite admitting it was "a stretch," Myers dinged Negy for conduct he had previously publicly admitted in his book White Shaming. She also faulted him for not reporting a sexual assault allegation against his teaching assistant, of which the administration "apparent[ly]" already knew and which Negy denied being told by the accuser, Mendoza said.

Though the investigation was officially limited to Negy's in-class speech, the judge said a jury could find it was actually retaliation for Negy's tweets based on timing.

The probe started a day after Negy emailed his department chair about the "potential scandal," which was forwarded to Dean Dupras, and the same day Cartwright and Johnson publicly condemned the tweets and Dupras told colleagues the administration was "actively working to address this situation." 

All three told Negy's critics how to file complaints in their public denunciations, and Dupras told a professor who demanded Negy's firing "I agree with the thoughts you have expressed."

He already had "a reputation of using incendiary language" and had "long been a menace upon UCF’s campus" in administrators' eyes. "So why act now?" Mendoza wrote, tasking a jury with answering whether the investigation "was rigged from the start."