Shawnee State University in Ohio has agreed to pay $400,000 in damages and attorney fees to a professor after threatening him with suspension or termination if he refused to acknowledge students by their preferred pronouns, marking a significant free-speech victory.

Philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether received a written warning after a January 2018 incident in which he addressed a male student as “sir,” The Epoch Times reported. The student approached Meriwether after class and said he identified as a woman and demanded that Meriwether address him with feminine titles and pronouns. Meriwether countered by stating he would simply refer to the student by his first or last name only, even a chosen name, but the dissatisfied student filed numerous complaints with the university.

“His chosen name, though not his birth name, is feminine, and I was willing to call him this, since using a person’s proper name doesn’t imply anything about what one believes or what is true,” Meriwether later explained in an opinion piece for The Hill, in which he expertly railed against leftist orthodoxy and the identity politics that has gripped college campuses and dehumanized anyone who identifies as a conservative or Christian.