St. Philips College recently agreed to bring back a Christian biology professor after he pressed a religious discrimination charge against the university with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The professor in question, Johnson Varkey, claimed that university administrators fired him following his decision to teach that X and Y chromosomes determine humans’ sexual characteristics. 

On February 20, 2024, First Liberty Institute announced that St. Philip’s College rehired Varkey a year after he was canned for giving lessons on basic facts about biology and reproduction.

“We are happy that the Alamo Community College District voluntarily reinstated Dr. Varkey,” Kayla Toney, associate counsel, declared in a news release. “He is excited by this outcome, and we are glad that [the Alamo Community College District] did the right thing. Dr. Varkey looks forward to continuing to educate students.”

Texas elected officials such as Senator Ted Cruz and Congressmen Chip Roy and Dan Crenshaw signed on to a letter to St. Philip’s College President Adena Williams Loston. In the letter, they demanded answers and expressed their concerns with district leaders appearing “to be violating federal and state civil rights laws by rashly and wrongfully terminating employees based on unsubstantiated allegations.”

Varkey’s firing was brought about by four students who walked out of his class back in November 2022 to protest his teaching that X and Y chromosomes determine sex.

According to Varkey’s letter of termination, the university had “received numerous complaints” about the “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter.”

Varkey is luckily going to get off easy because the university does not want to go through a damaging legal ordeal that could hurt its reputation and even bleed it dry. However, this case demonstrates the importance of continuously turning up the heat on institutions that behave in a nefarious manner. 

Bad political behavior must always be punished.