ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.

Four current and former New Mexico State University faculty members and a graduate student have filed a lawsuit in federal court charging university administrators with racial discrimination and unfair professional retaliation.

Four plaintiffs allege they were racially and sexually discriminated against in the university’s Department of Health Science and then lost their positions or were denied promotions after they complained about the problems, the 37-page complaint said.

The plaintiffs include faculty members Satya Rao, who is East Indian; former faculty members Dr. Yelena Bird, who is Black, and her husband, Dr. John Moraros, who is of Greek and Hispanic descent; and graduate student Freedom Cheteni, who is from Zimbabwe.

A fifth plaintiff, Robert Buckingham, who is White, alleged he was retaliated against professionally for refusing to help administrators support charges of plagiarism against Bird and Moraros, the complaint said.

Named as defendants are the NMSU Board of Regents, board member Robert Gallagher, former NMSU President Michael Martin, Health Science Department chairman James Robinson and Dr. Larry Olsen, a former professor and associate dean of the Health Science Department.

NMSU’s Senior Vice President Ben Woods said in a statement that the university stands by the decisions it has made regarding the plaintiffs.

“While we never look forward to a lawsuit, we do look forward to resolution of this issue. The courts are the proper venue for the facts to come out,” Woods said.

Christopher Moody, an attorney for the plaintiffs, called the allegations “astonishing.”

“It appears administrators are violating the law with impunity,” he said.

Moody said the case was filed electronically Thursday and has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Bruce Black in Santa Fe.

According to the complaint, the problems started when Moraros and others complained about receiving sexually explicit e-mails from Olsen starting in the spring of 2007.