Former school newspaper adviser dismisses federal lawsuit against IU, plans to refile in state

Indiana University

The former adviser of the Indiana Daily Student has voluntarily dismissed his federal lawsuit against the Indiana University Board of Trustees. His attorneys now plan to refile the matter in Monroe County.

According to Jon Little, an Indianapolis attorney representing Jim Rodenbush, the dismissal follows District Court Judge Matthew Brookman’s order to show cause, which asked the plaintiff to explain why the case should be in federal court.

Instead of fighting a battle most likely lost – that being to keep the matter in federal court – Rodenbush’s attorneys elected to dismiss the case. But Little says they will refile their case in Monroe County, where IU Bloomington sits, within the next month.

“This is content-based speech restriction,” Little told The Indiana Lawyer in a phone call on Wednesday, not letting up on their claims even amidst the transition.

“IU is either going to be allowed to stifle speech, or not,” he added. “We think the answer has to be they cannot.”

Mark Bode, a university spokesperson, said in an email on Thursday that IU does not comment on legal matters.

Rodenbush, who recently announced he will be joining Western Kentucky University as an associate professor of journalism, sued IU’s board of trustees on Oct. 30, 2025, alleging the board violated his First and 14th Amendment rights when it fired him for what he described as “retaliation.”

Rodenbush originally filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, arguing that his termination resulted from his refusal to “censor the students’ work” in the newspaper, known as the IDS.

According to Rodenbush, who spoke to The Lawyer over the phone on Thursday, the whole matter started in the fall of 2024, after IU’s Media School created its Student Media Action Plan, which made new initiatives to cut costs in student media.

One of the changes that came from the plan was to adjust IDS’s print schedule, moving it from weekly to about every two weeks. The plan also emphasized shifting print publications to primarily be “special sections,” such as homecoming guides. According to Rodenbush, these editions made the most money.

In the spring of 2025, when the plan went into effect, Rodenbush said he heard rumblings that school administrators were concerned about still seeing traditional news content in the printed publications.

In the past, even when IDS published special section content, it would still include regular news stories.

Come fall 2025, Rodenbush said, concerns from the administration resurfaced but were more demanding.

Rodenbush said that there had been a growing insistence from university officials that IDS remove traditional news from its printed publications.

Following a September 2025 meeting, Rodenbush says he pushed back against administrators’ guidance, telling them he would not remove news from the paper as he considered that to be censorship.

Not long after that meeting, the university fired Rodenbush, who had been IU’s director of student media for about seven years.

Shortly after Rodenbush’s termination, the university ordered the IDS to cease all print publications, which prevented it from publishing its planned homecoming issue.

But on the same day Rodenbush filed his complaint, the IDS reported that IU administration had changed course, allowing the school to print special issues for the school year.

The school has previously justified its actions in limiting the school’s publications to budgetary concerns, with IU Bloomington Chancellor David Reingold saying in a letter, which the IDS published the same day Rodenbush filed suit, that a “personnel decision” was made on campus “regarding a staff member engaged with the IDS.”

“While the university cannot speak about the details of that decision, I will note that it coincided with a convergence of long-term operational concerns related to the Student Media Action Plan and my recognition that an annual deficit approaching $300,000 is not infinitely sustainable,” Reingold said. “It was within this context that I chose to halt campus support for print editions of the paper.”

While the legal dispute plays out, Rodenbush says he has had to be incredibly patient.

“You just kind of have to remind yourself that this is a process,” he said.

If he were to sum up what he hopes the case results in, Rodenbush said it would be accountability.

“Some genuine accountability, some genuine acknowledgments of the circumstances as they happened, and then some real, you know, steps forward for the university and for the IDS that says, ‘Hey, we know we did this. We know that we misstepped. We’re going to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. We’re going to make sure that we, as a university, are out loud in our support of editorial independence and out loud in support of the First Amendment.'”