Posted on 10/24/2012 9:35:06 PM PDT by iowamark
A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the case of a conservative scholar who claims she was passed over for jobs at the University of Iowa law school because of liberal bias.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Shields called the mistrial in the case of Teresa Wagner after jurors reported they remained hopelessly deadlocked after three days of deliberations. Shields told jurors the move means the case will have to be retried or resolved some other way, such as a settlement.
"We'll fight another day," Wagner's lawyer, Stephen Fieweger, said afterward. "This is not over."..
Wagner said that claim was fabricated to excuse the political motivations of the 50-member faculty, which included 46 registered Democrats. She said the faculty did not want an outspoken female opponent of abortion rights to join their ranks.
Her lawyer had asked for more than $400,000 in damages, including lost wages and pain and suffering for "burning her bridges" in Iowa City.
Conservatives who claimed they had long been passed over for jobs and promotions in higher education had hoped Wagner would prevail because of her evidence suggesting discrimination, which is difficult to prove. The evidence included what her lawyer called a "smoking gun email" in which an associate dean warned then-Dean Carolyn Jones that he worried professors were blocking Wagner's hiring "because they so despise her politics (and especially her activism about it)."..
The trial exposed tension among the Iowa faculty and questionable hiring practices, including the law school's decision to erase a videotape of Wagner's job interview shortly after she was turned down. The university also could not produce any written documents showing criticism of her interview at the time; the only documents made public were from professors praising her...
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