A student who was removed from her college’s volleyball team is now filing a lawsuit against the school and the team, claiming that she was kicked off the team due to her conservative political views, according to Fox News.
Kylee McLaughlin was a member of the volleyball team at the University of Oklahoma. However, she says that once her conservative views became known, she was “frozen out” of the team at a social and institutional level, before being eventually kicked off altogether. She is now suing the team’s coach Lindsey Gray-Walton and assistant coach Kyle Walton, alleging an infringement on her First Amendment rights.
According to McLaughlin, the team was put through several indoctrination efforts by far-left views, including a viewing of the documentary “13th,” which claims that African-Americans are disproportionately incarcerated in the United States due to their skin color. During a team discussion following the screening, members of the team compared the incarcerations to “beatings of blacks in the 1960s.”
McLaughlin spoke out on social media against this incident and others, including an effort to replace “The Eyes of Texas” as the school spirit song for the University of Texas, simply pointing out that the song was not really racist. Coach Gray-Walton forced her to delete the post and apologize to the University of Texas on behalf of her team.
The ostracizing continued after that incident, with McLaughlin eventually being given three options by the coaches. She could either transfer, continue with her scholarship as a non-athlete student, or take a “redshirt year” where she would practice separately from the rest of the team for the rest of the academic year. She was also required to take 10 hours worth of “diversity and inclusion” training.
Her lawsuit declares that “although she supports equality, racial justice, and finds racism despicable, she disagreed with the woke culture and critical race theory advocated and practiced by two of her coaches.” The suit accuses the coaches of “intentionally inflicting emotional distress by alleging that she was a racist and a homophobe.”
The case is currently pending in the federal court of Oklahoma City.