- A judge tossed out the lawsuit of a former Yale psychiatrist who said she was fired over free speech.
- According to reports, Bandy Lee was reportedly terminated after tweets diagnosing Trump and his associates.
A federal judge tossed out a wrongful termination lawsuit against Yale University from a former psychiatrist at the school who said she was fired for publicly questioning the mental health of former President Donald Trump and his associates.
Bandy Lee, a psychiatrist who formerly worked at the Yale School of Medicine, claimed that the Ivy League institution ended her contract and violated her First Amendment rights, The Yale Daily News and The Hartford Courant reported.
In her ruling on Tuesday, US District Judge Sarah Merriam stated: "[Lee's] vague assertion that some unspecified provision in the Faculty Handbook creates a right to 'academic freedom' is plainly insufficient to show that [the] defendant undertook a contractual commitment to guarantee plaintiff continued reappointment," per the Daily News.
Lee's termination was linked to her 2020 tweets where she posted that Alan Dershowitz, a famed lawyer who previously represented Trump, and the former president's supporters "experienced shared psychosis," according to the reports. Lee said she was practicing her "duty to warn" the general public about Trump's mental state, The Courant reported.
According to the reports, concerns were raised about Lee's actions, which some said broke the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Goldwater rule. It states that psychiatrists should not make public statements about the mental health of public figures unless they have personally examined them, as Insider previously reported. Per the Courant, Lee called the rule a "gag order."
A spokesperson for Yale told the Daily News that the university is pleased with the court's decision and added that Lee's lawsuit "had no legal basis." In addition, Dershowitz told the outlet that although he was not involved in her termination, she "does not belong in a university setting, teaching children."
Lee, who wanted her complaint to be a catalyst for challenging the Goldwater rule, plans to appeal, according to the Daily News.