By Louis Chan
AsAmNews National Correspondent
The Federal Court in the District of Idaho has handed an Asian American student a legal victory in his discrimination lawsuit against Idaho State University.
The court approved a motion by attorneys for defendant Jun Yu to expand his complaint from three to 18 counts of wrongdoing.
“It is Idaho State University policy to not comment on current or pending litigation,” said a spokesperson. “At this time, we will not have a comment to issue.”
Yu, through his wife Jocelyn, also declined to comment, but referred us to his attorney Ron Coulter.
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Among the new counts is that the University denied Yu his due process rights when it removed him from the doctorate program in clinical psychology in 2013.
Coulter said Yu’s dismissal from the program “was arbitrary and capricious as well as a substantial departure from accepted academic norm.”
In granting the request to amend the complaint, the court rejected the university’s argument that the request was untimely and beyond the statute of limitations.
“This means that even if the Court were to find that the Title VI claim was untimely, it is not likely that the Court would dismiss Mr. Yu’s promissory estoppel, breach of contract, and substantive due process claims,” said Coulter.
The court also ordered Idaho State to turn over all records from 2008 to 2015 of all students who were pursuing doctorate degrees in the same program as Yu.
Coulter said Yu has “assembled a distinguished panel of experts who will testify,” but cautioned it is useless to try to predict when the case would go to trial.
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Yu’s legal bills are mounting. A crowdfunding campaign to raise money for their case has raised $7,700 of the $100,000 goal. The case has been pursued with much sacrifice.
“It means living a super-frugal existence in an apartment smaller than any hotel room you’ve ever stayed in, because you need to save money for the lawsuit and its associated costs,” said Yu’s wife Jocelyn Eikenburg in a blog post back in October.
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