A federal lawsuit filed by a Michigan State University professor accusing his supervisor of making false allegations of professional misconduct and using those allegations as a pretext to remove him from a grant-funded project was dismissed by a judge earlier this week.

James Anthony, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, claimed that when his department head removed him from a $1.4 million research project, he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in income, had trouble securing new grants, and saw his reputation damaged. He also claimed that he wasn't given enough time to respond to the allegations of misconduct.

In a judgment handed down in the U.S. District Court of Western Michigan on Jan. 20, Judge Jane Beckering concluded that Anthony hadn't provided enough evidence to argue that MSU violated his due process rights.

The judge also found that then-College of Human Medicine Dean Aron Sousa and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics Chair Dawn Misra, defendants in the case, were immune from Anthony's charges. Furthermore, Beckering threw out Anthony's accusations against the MSU Board of Trustees, noting that the governing body isn't a person and therefore can't be sued for damages.

In an email to The State News, Anthony wrote that he "had hope for a jury trial with a discovery process to get all the evidence out in clear view."

"Without a discovery process and MSU's characterization of my offense as 'minor,' we still do not know the nature of that MSU investigation nor what evidence it disclosed."

Sousa, Misra, and each of their attorneys did not respond to emails for comment before publication.

MSU Spokesperson Amber McCann declined to comment on the dismissal, saying the university does not comment on litigation.

The case largely revolved around the timing of a letter sent to Anthony by Misra in early 2022, in which she notified him of her "intent to discipline" him due to a series of concerns Misra had about Anthony's conduct.

It wasn't the first time Anthony's conduct at work had been called into question. Anthony had been "counseled" for unprofessional conduct in June 2019, according to the court filing, and had been warned by the previous department chair to “refrain from acting disrespectfully and inappropriately toward staff, drafting overly long emails, overloading staff with work, and assigning staff duties beyond those listed in an approved list.”