Lawprof’s First Amendment Case Against Univ. of Kentucky, and a Case’s “Journey so Circuitous it Would Make a Baggins Blush”

Ramsi Woodcock, a tenured University of Kentucky law professor, has been under investigation for more than a year for controversial comments regarding Israel and Palestine. The alleged comments varied in both content and forum: an online petition calling for the invasion of Israel, listserv blasts to the University faculty and broader legal academy accusing Israel of genocide, the interjection of far-afield remarks about colonization at an antitrust panel in Hong Kong, shouts of “Free Palestine!” while driving two law students near campus, and more.

None of the remarks came in the classroom and none appears to have disrupted school activities. Yet all related in some manner to his role as a state-employed professor—rendering all the more curious the University’s July 2025 decisions to promote him to full professor one week and call him in for questioning (literally) the next. {Curiouser still, Woodcock maintains that the remarks in question dated as far back as February 2024 and were known (at least in part) to the University since March 2024.}

The following week brought a public denunciation from the University’s President, the start of a formal investigation into potential harassment under Title VI, reassignment from teaching duties to “professional development,” and a (since rescinded) ban from campus. {This first of two “Notice[s] of Investigation” laid out four allegations that Woodcock “may have violated” the University’s code of conduct and other policies. The notice declared (without elaboration) that the “investigation … is consistent with the First Amendment” and “addresses requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.” A second notice, based on reports from four students, identified four additional allegations that may have “created a hostile environment on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”}

Rather than participate in the investigation, however, Woodcock filed this [federal] lawsuit …. The pleadings characterize his treatment by leaders of the University and its law school as retaliation for protected academic or personal speech, violations of the Due Process and Establishment Clauses, and racial and religious discrimination…. The issue ripe for resolution today is Woodcock’s request for temporary emergency relief halting the investigation and reinstating his teaching duties.

This is Woodcock’s second or third such request, depending on how one counts. And it follows a journey so circuitous it would make a Baggins blush.

The judge previously assigned to this case held a preliminary-injunction hearing in December 2025. Instead of granting or denying interim equitable relief, however, that judge decided to abstain [under Younger v. Harris] on the ground that the University investigation should precede any federal adjudication. The Sixth Circuit, in the spring and summer of 2026, declined to issue a stay, reversed on appeal, and declined to accelerate the mandate. {See Woodcock v. University of Kentucky (6th Cir. 2026) (Because the “the disciplinary proceedings against Woodcock remain[ed] in a preliminary, investigatory stage,” the proceedings were not “ongoing,” rendering Younger abstention inapplicable). Concurring with the denial of Woodcock’s request to immediately issue the mandate, Judge Gilman wrote that “the panel’s opinion” did not “in any way limi[t] the sound discretion of the district court regarding how to proceed on remand,” but instead “simply h[eld] that the district court erred in declining to accept jurisdiction based on Younger” without “purport[ing] to dictate what should happen upon remand; i.e., whether the district court should immediately proceed with a ruling on Woodcock’s preliminary-injunction motion, or whether it should first consider the University’s motion to dismiss, or whether it should stay proceedings to allow for the University to complete its investigation.”}

Woodcock, meanwhile, filed a parallel lawsuit and TRO request in state court in September 2026—relief that the Franklin (County) Circuit Judge denied without prejudice. {The Franklin Circuit Court consolidated the new case’s request a TRO with the First Amendment suit Woodcock originally filed in federal court seeking to prevent former-Judge Van Tatenhove from assuming his role as dean of the UK Law School. After this Court denied his requests for emergency relief, Woodcock voluntarily dismissed the federal claims and refiled in state court.} The Sixth Circuit then remanded and reassigned this federal case to a judge outside the Eastern District after one of that court’s [judges] was appointed dean of the law school. Woodcock had previously filed still another lawsuit—also reassigned here, and also to eventually land in state court—seeking to block the dean’s appointment on First Amendment grounds. The University investigation (led by a private law firm) resumed in September. And this Court held a TRO hearing in October. Although the investigator anticipated that this phase of the investigation would finish by November 2, that date has come and gone.

Such unusual litigation can raise unusual—and unusually tricky—legal questions. This is true here, even though the crux of Woodcock’s claim is superficially simple: the University leaders (Defendants here) took adverse action (investigation and reassignment) against him because of his constitutionally protected speech (chiefly, at least on his telling, Woodcock’s self-titled “Petition for Military Action Against Israel”). But resolving this question, at least in the context of preliminary equitable relief, raises several others that Supreme Court precedent leaves significantly undertheorized.

• When, if ever, does the fact, length, or nature of an investigation amount to retaliation for disfavored speech? {First Amendment caselaw certainly contemplates speech-related investigations. See Waters v. Churchill (1994) (plurality op.) (“Only procedures outside the range” of reasonableness violate First Amendment despite investigation’s “risk of erroneously punishing protected speech.”). And caselaw appears to strongly suggest they are not per se invalid. Under federal law, “colleges and universities are legally required to maintain a hostile-free learning environment and must strive to create policies which serve that purpose.” Schools may escape liability for harassment by “investigat[ing] promptly and thoroughly” when notified of alleged harassment…. [E]ven protected speech may be relevant to determining “whether actionable harassment occurred” …. Woodcock hasn’t pointed to any precedent indicating per se invalidity, though neither has the University pointed to any insulating investigations from scrutiny as the means of potential First Amendment retaliation. Some decisions have asked, for example, whether an investigation is outside the typical “formal process for reviewing evidence and weighing disputed claims.” And a university may not use an investigation to punish or preemptively chill protected speech.}
• Under what circumstances may a public school restrict the speech of a state-employed teacher on subjects of personal or intellectual concern related to—but distinct from—the professor’s public assignments?
• To what extent may a federal district court exercise emergency equitable remedies to superintend these investigative or pedagogical processes? {Public universities are in the “business of educating students,” and they have a pedagogical interest in preventing employees from “undercut[ting] the university’s power to do its basic job.”}
• Does the inquiry differ if the plaintiff has already unsuccessfully sought similar relief on similar grounds in state court?

None of the answers to these questions are obvious based on the record in this Court or the precedential decisions of others. Whether an investigation into speech and related conduct amounts to unconstitutional retaliation depends on whether the First Amendment protected the underlying speech and whether the state’s response would deter a person of “ordinary firmness” from speaking similarly. Protection for the speech, in turn, depends on whether Woodcock spoke in either his personal or his “academic” capacity. And even if one of those carve-outs apply, courts may still ask whether the “employee’s interest in speaking on a matter of public concern outweigh[s] the employer’s interest ‘in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.'” {Courts also consider “whether the statement (a) impairs discipline by superiors or harmony among co-workers, (b) has a detrimental impact on close working relationships for which personal loyalty and confidence are necessary, (c) impedes the performance of the speaker’s duties or interferes with the regular operation of the enterprise,” or (d) undermines the mission of the employer.”} Additionally, the appropriateness of interim equitable relief turns on similarly difficult—even incommensurable—considerations, including the burdens on Woodcock’s ongoing political speech (which appears to have continued in forums outside the classroom), the Commonwealth’s interest in controlling the taxpayer-subsidized education offered to its citizens and future officers of the court, and the public’s interest in open dialogue, effective investigations, and the avoidance of harassment.

Each of these determinations, courts have illustrated time and again, is fact-dependent. And although a previous judge held an evidentiary hearing nearly a year ago, time and events have not stood still. Woodcock has not, at least not yet, shown that the mere fact of an investigation would chill an ordinary speaker (to say nothing of a tenured professor) in these strange circumstances from engaging in speech on public questions inside or outside the classroom. After all, a university has an interest in “determin[ing] for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.”

Nor has Woodcock yet shown that the idiosyncratic lawprof speech at issue—in listservs, foreign conferences, links from the UK website, carpools, and the like—is necessarily protected, heedless of forum or audience. {For instance, whether institutional IT policies that restrict a professor’s use of school email resources amounts to a “prior restraint,” is hardly clear given the prevalence of content-neutral time/place/manner restrictions. And whether a professor’s off-topic panel remarks amount to an unprotected “shout-down” or instead protected academic speech, for example, likewise casts at least some doubt on Woodcock’s argument that this amounts to pure academic or political speech.} To be sure, whether he spoke in his professorial capacity is hotly contested by the parties—and cannot be determined with confidence or specificity at this stage.

Whether reassignment from all teaching duties would deter a speaker in a retaliatory manner is a closer question. This is particularly true because the University has seemingly identified no past or future campus disruption, little risk that Woodcock’s speech has or will infect classroom instruction, and any reason why responses other than prior restraint would be unavailable if Woodcock stepped outside the bounds of his role in the future. On the other hand, Woodcock hasn’t convincingly identified any aspect of this investigation or reassignment that is vindictive, disproportionately burdensome, or otherwise out of the ordinary.

Such showings are neither obvious nor obviously foreclosed on the current record. Indeed, they are not susceptible to prudent resolution by a distant district judge in the middle of a semester, when interim relief measured in two- or four-week increments [the duration of typical TROs -EV] is highly unlikely to benefit Woodcock in a manner that outweighs the concomitant disruption to the University’s orderly governance of academic affairs. Since Woodcock bears the burden of justifying temporary emergency relief, but has not carried it, the Court must deny his TRO request. When in doubt, the Sixth Circuit has reminded us, “[t]he administration of the university rests not with the courts, but with the administrators of the institution.

These are important questions worthy of further evidentiary presentation, however. To that end, the Court will schedule a second preliminary-injunction hearing later this month. The balance between state governance and individual speech can tilt too far in either direction, of course, and investigations cannot last forever. In hopes of limiting any federal judicial intervention to its appropriate role, and with “reluctan[ce] to trench on the prerogatives of state and local educational institutions,” therefore, the Court sets a preliminary-injunction hearing for Thursday, November 19 ….