DANIEL PEREZ/El Paso Matters - El Paso Matters
•7/21/2026
A Texas Tech Health El Paso faculty member self-censored part of a course about El Paso’s underserved population – and campus leaders have told them not to use the word “disparity” in class, according to a recent lawsuit.
The American Association of University Professors and its Texas chapter initiated legal action July 8 against Texas Tech University System Chancellor Brandon Creighton and the system’s nine Board of Regents to address what the plaintiffs believe are restrictions to what can be taught about sex, race, gender identity and sexual orientation.
On Friday, the plaintiffs asked the U.S. district court for the Western District of Texas El Paso Division for an immediate injunction to stop the system’s policies that control if or how faculty may teach those topics because those rules harm faculty throughout the system.
At issue are directives in memoranda that Creighton issued and the board approved in December 2025 and April 2026 that ordered administrators at the system’s five institutions to review course material for those prohibited subjects. He issued these edicts so courses would be more focused on workforce preparation, according to his December directive.
“This curriculum review under Senate Bill 37 will, in part, ensure each university is offering degrees of value,” he wrote in his first memorandum.
Creighton authored SB 37, which the Legislature passed in 2025. It serves as an enforcement and oversight mechanism for the state’s existing prohibitions for diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. It works alongside Senate Bill 17, passed in 2023, which abolished DEI offices in the state’s public colleges and universities.
According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, campus officials evaluated about 8,500 courses by early May 2026. The board’s Academic, Clinical and Student Affairs Committee assessed approximately 500 of them. As a result, dozens of those courses that already had been approved by provosts, deans and department chairs were modified.
In the case of TTHEP, it meant that students’ medical education could not include discussions of health disparities among racial and sexual minorities including Hispanics, African Americans and members of the LGBTQIA community.
“This isn’t academic oversight; it’s a chilling, top-down attack on the freedom to teach designed to intimidate faculty into silence,” said Todd Wolfson, AAUP president, as part of a prepared media statement.
Efforts to reach TTHEP President Richard Lange and Claudia Maria Prospero Ponce, president of the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine Faculty Council, were unsuccessful. A campus spokesman redirected questions about the lawsuit and questions about the effect of Creighton’s orders on TTHEP faculty, curriculum and students to the chancellor’s office in Lubbock.
While the system’s office did not provide a comment to El Paso Matters, it did send one to The Chronicle of Higher Education for a July 9 article about the lawsuit. A spokesperson said the system was confident that its policies were lawful and compliant with state and federal law.
“Our commitment to academic integrity and the First Amendment rights of our students and faculty will not be distracted by lawsuits,” the spokesperson said.
TTHEP also did not respond to questions about which courses were modified because of the chancellor’s directive. El Paso Matters submitted a Texas Public Information Act request last month for the modified courses and for any related background. The system sent the request to the Texas Attorney General’s Office and asked that it make an exception to the public disclosure of the requested information.
Antonio Ingram II, senior counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based Legal Defense Fund, said the issues are broader than course modifications because they deal with censorship of topics such as race and gender identity that affect students, faculty and borderland residents.
Along with the LDF, the plaintiffs’ are represented by Lambda Legal and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.
Ingram said it is unknown how many courses, especially those in healthcare, were affected by the directives. He said that medical school officials in El Paso and Lubbock have told their professors to not serve transgender patients in the presence of medical students.
“I think those are harder harms to quantify because you can’t look at a paper trail to see how many students did not receive adequate medical training because of the memoranda confusion when this first was rolled out in December,” Ingram said.
He said the lag time between when a subject was submitted and when a decision was made already impeded class discussions and experiential learning.
The lawsuit filed by the AAUP and its Texas chapter claims that the system’s directives have generated fear and confusion on the campuses. They plan to prove that the Creighton memoranda violate parts of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, and parts of the Fourteenth Amendment. Those include the Due Process Clause because the directive’s language is so unclear that the plaintiffs’ cannot differentiate what is and is not permissible, and the Equal Protection Clause because the orders intentionally discriminate against Black professors.
AAUP is a nonprofit labor union founded in 1915 and based in Washington, D.C. The association is dedicated to the protection of academic freedom and shared governance in higher education. It has more than 57,000 members across more than 600 campus chapters. The Texas chapter, known as the Texas Conference of the AAUP, started in 1964. It has more than 2,600 members spread across 100 campuses. It became affiliated with the Texas American Federation of Teachers in 2024. The Texas AFT has 66,000 members.
The lawsuit involves the entire TTU system that enrolls almost 66,000 students and employs approximately 21,000 staff, faculty and administrators at its five campuses – TTHEP; Texas Tech University in Lubbock; Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock with satellites in Amarillo, Abilene, Dallas, Midland and Odessa; Angelo State University in San Angelo; and Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls.
Ingram would not divulge the number of TTHEP faculty members or students that he interviewed in anticipation of the lawsuit, but said those he spoke with were “deeply scared” to come forward.
He said the censorship was especially egregious at TTHEP because of its mission to prepare health care professionals to serve border communities. The memoranda kept healthcare professionals from sharing their expertise with future doctors, nurses and researchers, he said.
The lawsuit included a lengthy focus on an anonymous TTHEP instructor named Member No. 8. The faculty member is described as a medical professional who focuses on population health issues. The document uses “they/them” pronouns for the instructor.
The narrative states that Member No. 8 censored their coursework references to underserved populations, and that TTHEP officials instructed them to not use the word “disparity” as they teach and train students about patient care. The faculty member thought these decisions diminished the level of instruction.
The description goes on to cite several examples where El Paso County residents experience more physically unhealthy days than peers across the state. It mentions the higher rates of diabetes and cervical cancer mortality than around the state, and the same for asthma for children, especially Hispanic children.
The story also points to the large Black population at the Fort Bliss Army installation beyond the Northeast part of the city and the significant health disparities that Black women face such as pregnancy-related mortality and breast cancer. Additionally, the instructor was concerned how the system’s directives about censored content could affect comprehensive care for LGBTQIA patients.
“Member #8’s ability to train medical professionals is tied to the ability to use accurate vocabulary and jargon about their community,” according to the lawsuit.
Ingram said he expected the case to be heard this summer in federal court in El Paso. He said there could be a ruling before the start of the fall 2026 semester, but that would be the judge’s decision.
While the TTU System appeared confident in the memoranda’s legal standing, Ingram pointed to the recent ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals against the Florida Stop W.O.K.E. Act, or the Individual Freedom Act. The three-member court decided, 2-1, that the state law restricted the First Amendment rights of public university professors to teach certain concepts related to race, gender and social privilege.
“I think jurisprudence is on our side,” Ingram said. He later added, “We’ve not seen policies like this because they’re patently unconstitutional based on settled precedent.”
This story was originally published by El Paso Matters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
