A federal appeals court has given a professor embroiled in a 2006 plagiarism scandal at Ohio University the go-ahead to proceed with a lawsuit against the university.

Jay S. Gunasekera, a professor and former chairman of the department of mechanical engineering at Ohio, sued two university officials — Provost Kathy Krendl and the engineering school’s dean, Dennis Irwin — in 2006, after the university suspended his graduate-faculty status over allegations that he had been negligent in preventing plagiarism among graduate students he was advising.

A federal district court dismissed the suit in 2007. But Thursday’s decision, by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, said that Mr. Gunasekera could proceed with his claim that the university had violated his rights in suspending his graduate-faculty status without due process. The court noted that Mr. Gunasekera had asserted that he was not given an opportunity to publicly defend himself against the allegations before the university acted.

The ruling also requires the university to offer Mr. Gunasekera “a name-clearing hearing,” where he could publicly defend himself.

The appellate court, however, agreed with the lower court in dismissing Mr. Gunasekara’s bid to seek damages for his claim that the university had violated his rights in publicizing his role in the scandal without due process.

A spokeswoman for Ohio University, Sally Linder, said she could not comment until she had read the decision.

A separate defamation lawsuit Mr. Gunasekera filed against the university in the Ohio Court of Claims has not yet gone to trial, John Spenceley Marshall, Mr. Gunasekera’s lawyer, said today. —David Shieh