An accounting professor at UCLA said he filed a lawsuit against the school after it put him on leave and allegedly threatened to fire him for not grading Black student’s more leniently than their peers.

“Recently, I was suspended from my job for refusing to treat my black students as lesser than their non-black peers,” Gordon Klein wrote in an op-ed titled, “Why I Am Suing UCLA.”

The ordeal began, according to Klein, on June 2, 2020, eight days after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. A white student emailed Klein asking for a “no harm” final for Black students, meaning low grades would not be counted, in response to “unjust murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.”

Klein described the proposal as “deeply patronizing and offensive” to Black students and said the email left him “shocked.”