Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS—6th Cir.: Professor, fired for research misconduct after publishing racially-charged paper, cannot revive claims, (Nov 5, 2025)

By Todd Harrison, J.D.

He had misrepresented his intended use of NIH data to advance a theory that genetic differences lead to a “racial IQ gap.”

Affirming a district court’s grant of summary judgment against the First Amendment retaliation claims asserted by a former Cleveland State University (CSU) professor, the Sixth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, determined that the controversial nature of the professor’s paper was not a motivating factor in the decision to terminate his employment. Even if the content of the paper had been different, no rational jury could disagree that CSU would have taken the same action, given the severity of the allegations asserted by the NIH and its imposition of “monumentally severe sanctions” against the professor after his purported misconduct came to light (Pesta v. Cleveland State University, No. 24-3947 (6th Cir. Nov. 4, 2025, unpublished)).

The professor began working for CSU in 1998, achieving tenure in 2010 and “full professor” status in 2016.

Controversial paper. In August 2019, the professor, along with three co-authors, published Global Ancestry and Cognitive Ability (Global Ancestry), wherein they purported to have found support for a difference in the cognitive ability between African-Americans and European-Americans, and “genetics as a potential partial explanation for group mean differences in intelligence.”

Datasets. When the prospect of authoring a paper like Global Ancestry first arose around March 2018, the professor and a research assistant discussed how to acquire the data needed for the project. Ultimately, they sought data from the NIH derived from its Trajectories of Complex Phenotypes (TCP) study, which catalogued the cognitive and mental-health development of around 10,000 Philadelphia-area adolescents.

The TCP dataset is available through the NIH’s Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP), parts of which the NIH subjects to restricted access. Access is restricted to protect and respect study participants, in part because permitting misleading or degrading use of sensitive data would undermine the public’s willingness to participate in studies and, in turn, result in less robust databases for researchers.

Data access requests. To acquire access, a researcher submits a research proposal in a data access request (DAR) to an NIH committee that confirms the project will conform with participant consent and other restrictions. Included with a DAR is a data use certificate (DAC) governing the principal researcher, their institution, and the NIH.

The professor submitted a total of three DARs related to what would become Global Ancestry. Around the same time, he requested a paid sabbatical for Fall 2019 to research “why are some people (and groups of people) smarter than others” by “estimat[ing] a person’s ancestry” and “see[ing] if these ancestry estimates predict cognitive ability.” CSU granted the request without any indication that it was uncomfortable with the subject matter.

Uploading data. At some point, the professor sought to generate more ancestry data from the TCP dataset. At the time of the study, participants self-reported race or ethnicity. To supplement this self-reported data, the professor developed a “genetic estimate of ancestry” by uploading TCP data to a Netherlands-based server used in connection with a program called HIrisPlex-S. He did not obtain approval from the NIH to upload the data to this server.

Paper published. In June 2019, the professor closed out his first DAR. On August 29, he submitted a renewal of his second DAR to preserve his access to the TCP dataset. The next day, he and his coauthors published Global Ancestry. The professor believed that because Global Ancestry was published after his August 29 renewal request, he did not have to report the paper to the NIH at that time, even though the paper had been submitted to the publishing journal on June 8 and had been accepted for publication on August 28.

Misconduct allegations. Sometime in September 2019, in response to the publication of Global Ancestry, several researchers from institutions other than CSU raised the possibility that the professor had engaged in research misconduct. On September 19, referencing recently raised “concerns,” the NIH emailed the professor about his use of the TCP dataset. The NIH cited his third DAR and required that the professor explain how his use of the TCP dataset was consistent with it. In response, the professor cited to the second and third DARs, and noted that “intelligence... is listed as a variable of interest in [the Third Request].” He eventually closed out the second DAR in August 2020 and the third DAR in February 2021.

Infractions. On May 27, 2021, the NIH found that the professor had committed several infractions. First, it noted a discrepancy between the second DAR’s description and a publication other than Global Ancestry. This additional publication was authored by the professor’s research assistant and the professor was initially listed as a co-author, though he later requested that his name be removed from the paper.

A second violation was found in the professor’s unapproved uploading of data to the HIrisPlex-S server, and a third violation in his failure to report Global Ancestry “at the time of project renewals.”

Finding these violations to be serious, the NIH expressed concern over whether CSU staff had been properly guided and trained regarding the use of restricted data, and punished the professor by revoking his access to the dbGaP and precluding him from submitting requests or being an authorized user on others’ requests for three years. It also demanded that CSU ensure the destruction of the data received by the professor. According to CSU’s provost, the three-year suspension “was the most serious sanction ever meted out by the NIH” against a lead researcher. The NIH denied the professor’s appeal of its determination.

Investigation. Concurrent with the NIH’s findings, CSU convened a committee to investigate the professor’s alleged research misconduct. The committee ultimately found four instances of clear and convincing research misconduct, and CSU’s provost determined that this conduct warranted dismissal.

After invoking the union-negotiated termination process of convening an ad-hoc committee of union and CSU officials, the provost made her termination decision official when the committee unanimously agreed that such a decision was warranted irrespective of the content of the professor’s research. Subsequently, the professor sued, asserting claims for First Amendment retaliation. The district court granted summary judgment in CSU’s favor against all claims and this appeal followed.

Motivating factor. First, the court addressed the causation portion of the professor’s retaliation claims, noting that it had recently clarified that its “motivating-factor test... does not require a but-for relationship” because “speech sometimes may motivate a defendant’s harmful action even if the defendant would have taken the same action for another reason without the speech.” Lemaster v. Lawrence Cnty., 65 F.4th 302, 309 (6th Cir. 2023). Instead, “[i]f the plaintiff meets this lower causation standard, the burden shifts to the... defendants” to “prov[e] that they would have taken the same action even if the plaintiff had not spoken.” Id.

Perceived bias. Instead of providing typical evidence of causation, such that CSU treated similarly situated professors differently or that the adverse action occurred close in time after the employer learned of protected activity, the professor devoted a significant portion of his argument to perceived bias on behalf of the CSU committee and the provost. He pointed to the fact that one committee member had expressed concern that it had not used strong enough language to condemn the subject matter of the professor’s research. However, the committee declined to include such language in its final report and expressly disclaimed that it was motivated by the content of the professor’s work.

Further, the court observed that, unlike in his three DARs to the NIH, in the professor’s request for a sabbatical he clearly described the nature of the research that would result in Global Ancestry, and CSU raised no concerns about the subject matter at the time, weakening his argument that CSU harbored bias.

Procedural shortcomings. Although the professor identified one or two procedural shortcomings in CSU’s investigation, the court found that the record lacked evidence from which a rational trier of fact could find either from direct evidence of bias or implied bias from a procedurally defective investigation, that the content of Global Ancestry was a motivating factor for the investigation of the professor and his subsequent termination.

Content irrelevant. Even if the court were to accept that the professor cleared the motivating-factor hurdle, it explained that no rational jury could disagree that CSU would have taken the same action even if the content of Global Ancestry had been different. The NIH identified four serious violations, and the CSU committee found that the professor had committed four instances of research misconduct.

Agreeing with the committee’s findings, the provost noted the severity of NIH’s sanctions and the resulting negative impact on CSU as a research institution, concluding that the professor’s conduct implicated four of six grounds for termination under the applicable collective-bargaining agreement. Underscoring this determination, the court noted that the professor’s own union participated in an ad-hoc committee that supported the termination decision.

“Whatever the controversial nature of Global Ancestry,” said the court, CSU officials were reasonably alarmed by the professor’s “cavalier handling of sensitive genomic data, misleading representations to the NIH about the nature of his research, failure to observe basic conflict-of-interest reporting, and the impact that his actions had on CSU as a research institution reliant on the NIH.”

Accordingly, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s determination that the professor failed to establish causation, and CSU was entitled to summary judgment against his claims.

The case is No. 24-3947.

Judge: White, H.

Attorneys: Frederick C. Kelly, III (Law Offices of Frederick C. Kelly) for Bryan Pesta. Karen Louise Giffen (Perez Morris) for Cleveland State University, Cleveland State University Board of Trustees, Laura Bloomberg, Harlan M. Sands, Benjamin Ward, Christopher Mallett, Conor McLennan, and Wendy Regoeczi.

Companies: Cleveland State University

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