Professors are becoming more litigious, and their increasingly censorial institutions are driving them past arbitration and onto the judicial battlefield, experts say. “As universities get more recalcitrant and perhaps treat professors more harshly when it comes to this kind of speech, [lawsuits] become the only option for professors to vindicate their free speech rights.” Branch was fired in October for calling Kirk “evil” on Facebook, despite a recommendation by a faculty panel that she be reinstated. Public universities are clearly bound by the First Amendment and “have to give their faculty free speech rights,” he said. Still, she’s moving ahead with a lawsuit against the California State University system, alleging it violated her First Amendment rights.