The main building of the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center, pictured March 20, 2023, in Baton Rouge. (Matthew Perschall/Louisiana Illuminator)
A suspended LSU law professor who had been cleared to return to the classroom won’t be going back just yet. The state’s 1st Circuit Court of Appeal blocked a district judge’s order from earlier this week that would have let Ken Levy teach again, the Louisiana attorney general confirmed Thursday.
The university removed Ken Levy from his teaching duties for comments about Gov. Jeff Landry that LSU President William Tate said were “over a line that I would expect to see in a law classroom,” according to the campus leader’s testimony in court Tuesday. Transcripts Tate reviewed from Levy’s lecture, which a student had recorded, featured the professor’s comments about Landry and President Donald Trump that included profanities.
Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill have been highly critical of Levy on social media. The professor’s attorney, Jill Craft, has said LSU’s actions are in violation of her client’s First Amendment right to free speech, prompting him to sue the school. Levy also maintains the university violated its own policy for tenured professors.
During a hearing in the case Tuesday, state Judge Tarvald Smith issued an order that directed LSU to end the professor’s suspension while its investigation into his alleged conduct took place. The 1st Circuit ruling Thursday overrides Smith’s order and places him back on suspension.
“I’m glad to see that the Court of Appeal paused this clearly improper order. This matter will proceed now in an ordinary course, and I’m sure Professor Levy will get the process to which he’s due,” Murrill said Thursday in a statement.
In his lawsuit, Levy insists that his comments about the Republican governor and president were made in a joking manner in order to emphasize his “no recording” policy for his classes.
“Disgusting and inexcusable behavior from Ken Levy. Deranged behavior like this has no place in our classrooms!” Landry wrote in one of two social media posts he made Wednesday regarding the court case.
Earlier in the day, the governor, who earned his law degree from Loyola University in New Orleans, called the judge’s order returning Levy to the classroom “absurd” and said Smith had ignored “the facts, the law and the Constitution.”
The 1st Circuit panel that rejected Smith’s order included Judges Kelly Balfour and Walt Lanier III and Chief Judge Paige McClendon.
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