well, like a lot of people in this country, nicholas meriwether was bullied by lunatics, but he rarelye filed a lawsuit and just won his case in the sixth circuit court of appeals. we are happy to have nicholas meriwether join us tonight, along with kristin wegner, senior legal counsel. thank you both are coming on. so, first -- first, to you, professor, it's amazing that you won. i never think of people as fighting back against this. what made you decide to take them to court? >> well, basically if i had not, i would have been fired, i would have been terminated. that was one reason. it wasn't the only reason. the other was as you say, as you just said, i think we need to stand up against it, and i do think that we are losing our academic freedom. we are losing our freedom to disagree, and until people stand up to it, i think it's just going to get much, much worse much, much faster. >> tucker: kristin, tell us what the legal -- what the legal precedent that you've set in this case is, that others can use to win. >> well, we won on both free speech and free exercise grounds, and the s

court ruling citing first amendment protections among others let's lead off the panel with nicholas meriwetherhat lawsuit for violating free speech and free exercise of religion and alliance evening freedom senior counsel and discovery institute director christopher rufus. welcome to all of you. >> thanks for having us. shannon: an opinion piece by andrew koppelman says if the plaintiff prevails teachers in public colleges will have a constitutional right to subject their students to bigoted slurs. much of the antidiscrimination law would be deemed unconstitutional. your response? >> i wrote a response to professor koppelman but he's missing a fundamental point that diversities are not to be places where ideology is coerced and forced upon professors and that was the case with me. tolerance is a 2-way street and in my case i was going to be required to endorse an ideology on pain of being terminated so talking about pronouns misses the point. of what happened. this is about academic freedom, religious leaning. shannon: what is your implication of this ruling and where do you go from here? >> t