A University of Kansas student once expelled for sexual harassment — including referencing his ex-girlfriend on Twitter — is appealing his federal lawsuit against a KU administrator.

Navid Yeasin this week filed a notice to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. Earlier this month, a U.S. District Court judge in Kansas City, Kan., dismissed Yeasin’s lawsuit seeking more than $100,000 in damages from KU Vice Provost for Student Affairs Tammara Durham.

“As a result of KU’s wrongful expulsion of Yeasin, he has suffered damages in the form of delay in completing his education, lost employment and wages, emotional distress and mental anguish, attorney fees and litigation costs,” his suit said.

Free speech advocates are watching the case, because it involves the still-fuzzy constitutional question of whether universities are allowed to discipline students for things they say on social media.

After spending more than two years expelled while battling his case in county and state courts, Yeasin is now re-enrolled at KU, according to the university’s directory.

KU expelled Yeasin in fall 2013 and banned him from campus for nonacademic misconduct. A KU investigation found that Yeasin sexually harassed his ex-girlfriend, also a KU student, during an incident in Johnson County that led to a restraining order against him and also over derogatory tweets he made that referenced but did not name her. According to court documents, he had blocked her from seeing his Twitter profile, but a friend showed her the posts.

Yeasin sued KU in Douglas County District Court, where a judge ruled KU overstepped its jurisdiction — according to its student code at the time — and must reinstate him. KU appealed to the Kansas Court of Appeals, which in September 2015 affirmed the lower court’s ruling.

Yeasin filed the lawsuit asking for financial damages first in county court, and it was moved to federal court in January 2016. On Dec. 1, Judge Julie Robinson dismissed the suit.

The judge ruled that Durham is entitled to qualified immunity, which protects government officials from liability for civil damages unless they violated the defendant’s “clearly established” constitutional rights. In her dismissal, Robinson did not state an opinion about whether online speech by students should be protected by the First Amendment, as Yeasin argued, but said the question remains legally unclear without analogous rulings by higher courts.