A split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Thursday upheld the dismissal of a North Carolina State University professor’s lawsuit that alleged the school retaliated against him for a blog post that criticized a higher education conference as a “woke joke.”

Judges Stephanie Thacker and James Wynn said the write-up on professor Stephen Porter’s personal blog may have been protected speech under the First Amendment, but Porter didn’t show that the college threatened his tenure because of the post.