The federal appeals court in New York City has dismissed a lawsuit by a psychiatrist who called Trump supporters mentally ill. Its ruling is unpublished, and thus will not serve as binding precedent in any future case.
Bandy Lee was a Yale University researcher and volunteer. Yale declined to renew her appointment after her remarks created bad press for the university.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a trial judge’s 2022 ruling that Yale did not violate the law when it declined to renew Lee’s appointment.
Lee did not “adequately allege a promise that Yale would not decline to renew her appointment on account of her public statements,” the three-judge panel said in its unanimous decision. It explained why it was rejecting some of her arguments, but then rejected the remainder without explaining why (which is common for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, even in high-profile constitutional cases, where a litigant who raises many constitutional issues may find that the court discusses only some of them, while rejecting others with no explanation at all).
“We have considered Lee’s remaining arguments and found them to be without merit,” the judges said toward the end of their ruling upholding the trial judge’s decision.
Lee had raised hackles by diagnosing as mentally ill President Donald Trump, his supporters and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. She claimed Trump supporters suffer from “shared psychosis.”
She also claimed on Twitter that Trump “spellbinds his followers ever more deeply” and likened him to Hitler, saying he was worse than the genocidal German dictator. She also authored a book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” that included the opinions of 37 psychiatrists on the former president’s mental health, which ran afoul of the so-called Goldwater Rule (which discourages psychiatrists from diagnosing public figures from afar; it was adopted in response to liberal shrinks purporting to diagnoset longtime U.S. Senator, and 1964 Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater).
Lee has repeatedly demanded that Trump be put on a 72-hour psychiatric hold.
Lee held a volunteer position at Yale, which made it difficult for her to allege a breach of contract. But Lee claimed that losing the position cost her compensation that she would otherwise have received due to her affiliation with prestigious Yale University, an Ivy League institution.
“In exchange for her student-related and teaching activities, Dr. Lee received benefits, privileges, and opportunities,” her original lawsuit stated. She also received “related compensation and other indirect but significant remuneration, that she would not have otherwise received but for her academic affiliation with Yale.”
Lee still comments on former president Trump, including in an internet newsletter that mostly comments on the former president.
We as a society suffer for failing truly to understand how violent dangerous individuals can become. This is what happened when the nation handed power to Donald Trump, and it is also what happens when Family Courts hand children over to their abusers.
— Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv (@BandyXLee1) June 21, 2023
“We as a society suffer for failing truly to understand how violent dangerous individuals can become,” she said this week. “This is what happened when the nation handed power to Donald Trump, and it is also what happens when Family Courts hand children over to their abusers.”
“My warning now is not to think for a moment that Donald Trump and his cohorts are finally contained,” she said last week, in approving of Trump’s indictment. “Like most other criminals who have not been contained, they are now threatening to burn the house down.”
