Lisa Wagner's Lawsuit Against University of Iowa Law School

This is an amazing story.

At New York Times, "Suit by Conservative Sees Bias in Law School Hiring":

WASHINGTON — Teresa R. Wagner is a conservative Republican who wants to teach law. Her politics may have hurt her career.

An official of the University of Iowa College of Law, where Ms. Wagner applied for a job in 2006, certainly seemed to think so.

“Frankly, one thing that worries me is that some people may be opposed to Teresa serving in any role, in part at least because they so despise her politics (and especially her activism about it),” Associate Dean Jonathan C. Carlson wrote in 2007 to the law school’s dean, Carolyn Jones.

Ms. Wagner, who graduated from the law school in 1993 and had taught at the George Mason University School of Law, was not hired. She sued, alleging discrimination because of her political beliefs. Late last month, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, ruled that her case should go to trial, saying she had presented enough evidence to suggest that “Dean Jones’s repeated decisions not to hire Wagner were in part motivated by Wagner’s constitutionally protected First Amendment rights of political belief and association.”

Ms. Wagner’s lawyer, Stephen T. Fieweger, said the decision was a victory for an important sort of academic freedom.

“It’s gotten to the point where the law school’s diversity efforts are to eliminate everyone from the mainstream,” he said. “They espouse cultural diversity, but won’t consider the conservative viewpoint.”

According to Ms. Wagner’s lawsuit, the law faculty at Iowa in 2007 included a single registered Republican among its 50 or so members. The Republican professor was appointed in 1984. In 2009, The Des Moines Register found that there were two registered Republicans on the faculty.

Ms. Wagner would have added some balance, her lawyer said.

“My client is an ideologue,” Mr. Fieweger said. “She does believe in conservative values.” Ms. Wagner has worked for the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes abortion and euthanasia, and the Family Research Council, which takes conservative positions on social issues.

Althouse posts on this, focusing on libertarian scholar Walter Olson's comments at the article. I don't have misgivings about the lawsuit. I can't imagine Ms. Wagner going to work at the law school, however. This kind of stuff generates an enormous amount of ideological hatred. Seriously. To call out the law school deans for that kind of bigotry and win the matter at the appellate level? It's a crushing repudiation of the left's hypocrisy on difference and diversity, to say the least. And here's hoping that Ms. Wagner prevails should there be further appeals. Universities need to hold their faculty accountable to the very principles of inclusion they mouth when allegations of bias are lodged against those bastions of discrimination and favoritism so historically hated by the left.