Jim Rodenbush said the termination breached his free speech and due process rights
Indiana University faculty adviser Jim Rodenbush has filed a federal lawsuit after he was terminated over an issue involving the student newspaper’s content, reported the Associated Press.
Rodenbush alleged that he was fired for refusing to cut news stories from the Indiana Daily Student’s homecoming print edition earlier this month. The suit, which claimed a violation of free speech and due process rights, described the university’s action as “a direct assault on the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment,” per a statement published by AP News.
Rodenbush’s lawyer said the suit sought a court statement that “the First Amendment still matters,” according to AP News. Rodenbush was also aiming to be reinstated in his job and to secure monetary damages.
Rodenbush claimed that administrators had questioned the presence of hard news pieces in the Indiana Daily Student’s annual seven special sections. Rodenbush reportedly told Indiana University’s media school dean, David Tolchinsky, that the students made the editorial decisions for the paper; subsequently, Tolchinsky dismissed him and halted future print editions of the paper.
Tolchinsky said in a statement published by AP News that Rodenbush was terminated on October 14 due to his “lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the university’s direction for the Student Media Plan.”
“The question is if a university doesn’t like the content of the student newspaper, can it simply pull the plug on the student newspaper,” Jonathan Little, Rodenbush’s attorney, said in a statement published by AP News.
Indiana Daily Student editors revealed this week that the university had reversed its decision to stop producing print editions of the paper, with chancellor David Reingold permitting the use of the paper’s established printing budget through June 30, 2026. Reingold told the editors in a letter that a “personnel matter” and the financial decision to stop printing had created the perception that the university sought to censor the paper’s content.
“Let me be clear: my decision had nothing to do with editorial content of the IDS. And contrary to what has been posted on social media and published, Indiana University has never attempted to censor editorial content, period,” Reingold wrote in the letter, a snippet of which was published by AP News.
Student editors Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller responded in a letter that “telling student journalists what they can and cannot include in a newspaper is censorship of ‘editorial content’ by any definition,” per a snippet published by AP News.
AP News said it left university spokespersons phone and email messages. Indiana University had said in a statement earlier this month that the paper was shifting from print to digital publication.
