Like the District Court, this panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals declined to address the merits of my First Amendment and due process claims and instead focused on whether it makes sense for federal courts to abstain from hearing my constitutional challenges out of respect for the University as a state actor.

Unfortunately, the panel didn’t offer a solution to a key problem posed by abstention in my case: because the University has refused to decide my constitutional objections until after it has completed the investigation, there’s no opportunity for me to obtain a ruling on the university’s retaliatory investigation until after the retaliation has concluded. In general, federal courts don’t like to abstain where that would make it impossible for a plaintiff to stop unconstitutional activity before it comes to an end.