Petitioner, Dr. Teresa Buchanan, was terminated
from her tenured position at Louisiana State
University under the school's sexual harassment
policies. Those policies were adopted pursuant to a
federal "blueprint" for enforcing Title IX of the
Education Amendments of 1972 that downplayed
concerns about the First Amendment and academic
freedom, and which directed universities to sanction
any "unwelcome verbal ... conduct of a sexual
nature" without regard to whether it is severe,
pervasive, and objectively offensive. Although other
circuits have invalidated nearly identical college
sexual harassment policies as unconstitutionally
vague or overbroad in violation of the First
Amendment, the Fifth Circuit upheld Dr.
Buchanan's termination without any review of the
policies enforced against her. The decision below
presents two critical questions of First Amendment
law that require this Court's review:

1. Whether the Fifth Circuit erred by foreclosing
Petitioner's ability to challenge the constitutional
validity of a public university's speech regulation
under which she was terminated from her
tenured professor position?

2. Whether the Fifth Circuit erred by allowing
enforcement of a public university's sexual
harassment policies that regulate speech using
overly broad and vague terms, contrary to holdings of the Third, Fourth, and Ninth Circuits?

Whether the Fifth Circuit erred by foreclosing Petitioner's ability to challenge the constitutional validity of a public university's speech regulation under which she was terminated from her tenured professor position?