A state judge in Illinois has thrown out two lawsuits that sought to get the University of Illinois to retain Chief Illiniwek as its mascot, The News-Gazette, a newspaper in Champaign, Ill., reported. The university’s Board of Trustees decided in February to banish the chief, ending a long-simmering dispute that had splintered the flagship campus at Urbana-Champaign and had led the NCAA to ban Illini teams from playing host to postseason sporting events.

One of the suits was filed by two Illinois students who had portrayed the chief, and the other by a local lawyer. The students had argued that the trustees’ action violated a 1996 statute enacted by the General Assembly that said Chief Illiniwek “is and may remain the honored symbol” of the university.

In today’s ruling, Judge Michael Q. Jones of the State Circuit Court for Champaign County rejected that argument. “Had the Legislature intended to remove from the trustees the authority to do anything with the symbol, they could have said so,” Judge Jones said, underscoring the use of the word “may” in the act. He also agreed with the arguments made by a lawyer for the university, that the students’ rights to free speech, expression, and academic freedom had not been violated. —Charles Huckabee