A federal appeals court on Friday reversed a lower court decision, ruling that an Ohio professor’s First Amendment rights may have been violated when his university tried forcing him to refer to a biological male student using female pronouns. A panel on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether “has plausibly alleged that Shawnee State violated his First Amendment rights by compelling his speech or silence and casting a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.” Shawnee State University, in Ohio, has employed Meriwether for 25 years. The case centers around a 2016 rule change that saw the school require faculty that they had to refer to students by their “preferred pronoun[s].” When Meriwether, a Christian, sought clarification on the rule, a university official claimed that Christians are “primarily motivated our of fear” and should be “banned from teaching courses regarding that religion.” She also said she …