Who is Judge Kyle Duncan? Stanford Law School issues apology after heckling video goes viral

Judge Kyle Duncan was invited to speak at an event at Stanford Law School on Thursday. However, Duncan, a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, covering Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, was met by protesting students, and his speech was cut short. A video of the same is being widely circulated online.

The federal appeals court judge said that Stanford owed him an apology as he was disrespected by the students at an event. Duncan told Reuters that he felt offended and disturbed by the uncivil behavior of the students.

Soon after the judge's statement, Stanford University apologized to him. President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and dean of Stanford Law Jenny Martinez sent a letter of apology to Judge Kyle Duncan on Saturday.

"We write to apologize for the disruption of your recent speech at Stanford Law School. As has already been communicated to our community, what happened was inconsistent with our policies on free speech, and we are very sorry about the experience you had while visiting our campus."

The letter further read,

"The students had a right to protest but not disrupt and that staff members like Steinbach failed to enforce university policy."

The letter further read,

"We are taking steps to ensure that something like this does happen again. Freedom of speech is a bedrock principle and we can and must do better to ensure that it continues even in polarized times."

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Judge Kyle Duncan was appointed by former President Donald Trump

Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan is the US Court Judge for the Fifth Circuit. He was nominated by former President Donald Trump on October 2, 2017, and later confirmed by the US Senate on August 24, 2018.

Judge Duncan was previously a partner at the Washington, DC-based office of Schaerr Duncan LP from 2016 to 2018. He completed his Bachelor of Arts from Louisiana State University, and then got his Juris Doctor from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University. Duncan also completed his Master of Laws from Columbia Law School.

For the unversed, Judge Duncan is known for his history of anti-LGBT activism. In 2015, he argued in front of the Supreme Court against same-sex marriage. In 2020, he even refused to identify a transgender defendant by their preferred pronouns and said,

"Congress has said nothing to prohibit courts from referring to litigants according to their biological sex, rather than according to their subjective gender identity."

Besides this, Duncan was also on the three-judge panel that was involved in halting the Biden Administration's OSHA rules mandating COVID-19 vaccinations or weekly COVID testing in workplaces with 100 employees or more.

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What was the outrage that took place at Stanford Law School?

Judge Duncan was recently invited to the Stanford Law School for a discussion on “Guns, Covid and Twitter.” However, while delivering the speech, he was heckled by the students. In videos that are now doing the rounds online, the students can be heard booing the judge.

Moreover, Tirien Steinbach, Stanford's associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), was seen interrupting Judge Kyle Duncan and giving an emotional speech in which she addressed how the judge had caused harm through his work on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

As per reports, the students who heckled Judge Kyle Duncan were angry at him for his 2020 opinion, in which he refused to use the preferred pronouns of a transgender offender.