(The Center Square) – The Goldwater Institute petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s decision that said professor Owen Anderson could not sue Arizona State University for mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion training.
Stacy Skankey, a lawyer for the Phoenix-based nonprofit, told The Center Square this week that the petition to the Arizona Supreme Court is challenging an Arizona Court of Appeals decision made in December that said public employees can’t sue over a state law, “which prohibits certain blame or judgment on the basis of race, sex, and ethnicity.”
Skankey said Anderson is asking the state Supreme Court to “correct the legal error made” the court of appeals.
The lawyer called the court of appeal’s decision “far-reaching,” adding that “it turned a civil rights law into a suggestion that no one can enforce, so it made the law effectively meaningless.”
“A law without any mechanism to enforce the law is just words on paper,” Skankey explained.
The Arizona Supreme Court “needs to correct” the error, she said.
Arizona law forbids local and state governments and universities from requiring DEI training, Skankey noted. She added the law prevents state taxpayers’ money from funding that training.
In 2024, Anderson sued ASU after being required to attend the school’s “Inclusive Communities” DEI training.
Anderson told The Center Square this week that the things he had issues with regarding ASU’s training dealt with white skin being signaled out “as something that could be morally judged” and “anti-Christian rhetoric.”
He said many people who underwent the ASU DEI training said it was “not valuable” and a “waste of time.”
ASU still provides the “Inclusive Communities training,” Skankey said.
Anderson said he’s suing over “really important employment issue facing Arizona.”
He added that his legal case “has implications” for state employees about whether they can take their “employer to court” if employees believe “they’re violating the law.”
If Anderson’s legal case doesn’t go to court, ASU is effectively striking down the law, making it “unenforceable,” the professor explained.
Anderson said the training ASU requires “shuts down free speech because it tells employees” that this is their boss’ political perspective, and if employees disagree with this, they could lose their job or lose a promotion.
“There’s really no place for the employer taking a political stand like this instead of just encouraging free debate,” he said.
The professor said it is of “supreme importance” that people at universities can speak freely.
”The whole value of a university is [to] pursue knowledge and wisdom. And if we can’t have free debate and if we can’t have free speech, then all those goals go out the window,” he explained.
According to Anderson, people on the left say they’re for inclusion, but don’t include a conservative or Christian perspective.
“ I’m just asking ASU to live up to its own standards and promote and protect a minority viewpoint, which in our day and age means a conservative Christian viewpoint,” Anderson explained.
The Center Square reached out to ASU but did not receive a response before press time.
