The publicly funded University of North Texas was dealt a blow in court after a federal judge said school officials can be held responsible for firing employees for exercising their right of free speech. In his 69-page order of March 11, Judge Sean Jordan, of the United States District Court for Eastern Texas, found that university officials should have known that math professor Nathaniel Hiers’ speech “touched on a matter of public concern and that discontinuing his employment because of his speech violated the First Amendment,” before they fired him for going public with his disagreement with the left-wing concept...