Three people, including a tenured professor and a graduate student, are challenging a move by the University of Indiana to bar them from returning to campus after they were arrested for participating in pro-Palestinian protests, in a lawsuit they filed over the one-year bans.

Germanic studies associate professor Benjamin Robinson, sociology grad student Madeleine Meldrum and Bloomington, Indiana, resident Jasper Wirtshafter, a university graduate, claim the school violated their First Amendment rights by slapping them with no-trespass orders.

All three were arrested on the school's Bloomington campus during demonstrations that began on April 25, a week after the first wave of arrests at New York City's Columbia University.

Their lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis, seeks unspecified damanages and a permanent injunction allowing them  to return to the campus' Dunn Meadow to continue protesting there.

Meldrum and Wirtshafter are also seeking preliminary injunctions, but Robinson got a temporary stay of his ban when he filed an appeal, although he missed demonstrations held April 26 through 29, according to court papers.

"He would have attended those protest activities in Dunn Meadow if he had not received the no-trespass order," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit targets the school's board of trustees and its president, Pamela Whitten.

A university spokesperson declined to comment, citing a police policy against discussing pending litigation, according to the Bloomington Herald-Times.

More than 50 people have been arrested at the school since late last month and some local officials have condemned the state police for posting troopers with "sniper capabilities" on nearby roofs, according to the Indianapolis Star.

The plaintiffs, who are being represented by the ACLU of Indiana, claim that the university's no-trespass orders are a "quintessential example of a prior restraint" that prevent people from "being able to enter the public forum of Dunn Meadow to engage in First Amendment expression."

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that efforts at prior restraint involving news outlets are unconstitutional except in cases involving immediate threats to national security or incitements to violence, according to Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute.

In a prepared statement, the ACLU of Indiana said Dunn Meadow has been Indiana University's "designated free speech area" since 1969.

"Indiana University cannot preemptively ban persons from engaging in this protected expression by prohibiting them from entering Dunn Meadow for a year or more," ACLU of Indiana legal director Ken Falk said in a statement. "Our future ability to engage in speech activities cannot be denied in this way."

In addition to its main Bloomington campus, the setting for the Oscar-winning 1979 movie "Breaking Away," Indiana University has eight other locations across the state, according to its website.