TOLEDO, OH — A federal appeals court has upheld the firing of a University of Toledo official who was terminated after she wrote a newspaper editorial in opposition to LGBT rights.

The decision of the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the opinion piece written by Crystal Dixon, who was serving as the school’s interim Associate Vice President for Human Resources, “contradicted the very policies she was charged with creating, promoting, and enforcing,” and could not be considered as exercising her right to free speech.

The judges upheld a lower court ruling that dismissed a suit filed by Dixon against the University for violating her constitutional rights.

In an April 2008 opinion piece that was published in the Toledo Free Press, Dixon said that she took “great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are ‘civil-rights victims.’” Dixon, who is African American, wrote that she “cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman” since this is “as my creator intended.”

Dixon was fired after a hearing by school officials, and sued administrators for violating both her First Amendment guarantee of free speech and her 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law, citing the school’s tolerance for positive opinions about homosexuality.

The panel upheld the firing because the judges said her editorial “spoke on policy issues related directly to her position at the university.”