(Reuters) - A psychiatrist has filed a lawsuit claiming Yale University's medical school unlawfully refused to renew her contract over a tweet she posted questioning the mental state of prominent lawyer and law professor Alan Dershowitz, who defended former President Donald Trump at his first impeachment trial.

Bandy Lee, in a complaint filed in Connecticut federal court on Monday, accused Yale of breach of contract and wrongful termination, and said her tweet claiming Dershowitz had "wholly taken on Trump's symptoms by contagion" was a valid exercise of free speech.

Lee had previously made headlines for flouting ethical guidelines against psychiatrists attempting to diagnose public figures from afar by publicly claiming Trump was mentally incapacitated and a danger to the country.

In a tweet last January, Lee claimed that comments Dershowitz made during a Fox News interview were emblematic of a "'shared psychosis' among just about all of Trump's followers."

Dershowitz, a graduate of Yale Law School, called for Lee to be disciplined for violating ethical rules, and Yale School of Medicine declined to renew her contract soon after.

Yale did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dershowitz, who is not named as a defendant in Lee's lawsuit, said on Tuesday that her firing was caused by her "completely unprofessional, unethical and unacademic" conduct. He said he had no contact with Yale after making an initial complaint about her tweet.

Lee had served as a faculty member at the medical school since 2003. Her contract was renewed every three years, according to her complaint.

In 2017, shortly after Trump took office, the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution recommending that its members not comment on public figures, even without diagnosing them. Lee had not been a member of the APA since 2007, she said in her complaint.

Later that year, Lee organized an ethics conference at Yale entitled "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," where more than two dozen mental-health professionals offered assessments of the president's mental state.

Dershowitz in July 2019 appeared on Fox News following revelations about his ties to billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who had been arrested on sex trafficking charges, and during the interview claimed he had "a perfect, perfect sex life."

Trump would later claim that a telephone call between him and the president of Ukraine, which formed the basis of his 2019 impeachment, was a "perfect conversation" and a "perfect call."

Lee, in her January 2020 tweet, said the odd use of "perfect" by both men "might be dismissed as ordinary influence in most contexts." But "given the severity and spread of 'shared psychosis' among just about all of Trump's followers, a different scenario is more likely," she said.

Dershowitz complained to Yale, claiming Lee had violated APA ethics rules by publicly diagnosing him as psychotic.

Lee soon after learned her contract would not be renewed. In terminating her, the school said she had made the comments as a professional psychiatrist and not a layperson, and cited the 2017 APA rule.

But Lee, in her complaint, said that by firing her, Yale violated its own policies guaranteeing academic freedom and punished her for comments protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

She is seeking reinstatement to her position and compensatory and punitive damages.

The case is Lee v. Yale University, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 3:21-cv-00389.

For Lee: Robin Kallor of Rose Kallor

For Yale: Not available