A lawsuit alleging wrongful termination by former Sunriver police chief Michael Kennedy was partially dismissed by a federal judge last week, but Kennedy’s attorney said the suit will go forward.

A 22-year veteran of the small department, Kennedy was appointed chief in 2000. In February 2012, the managing board of the Sunriver Service District fired Kennedy, claiming he was the wrong person to lead an effort to improve relations between the police department and the community.

Kennedy filed suit in July 2012, asserting his firing was politically motivated and seeking payment of $1 million to compensate for lost wages and damage to his reputation.

The suit identifies the service district, the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners, the Sunriver Owners Association, former SROA board member John Salzer and former service district board member Doug Seator as defendants. In the account laid out in Kennedy’s suit, the former chief claimed he repeatedly butted heads with the boards of the service district and the SROA in recent years, and that members of the two boards fired him in retaliation.

In an opinion Jan. 16, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Akin found Kennedy failed to demonstrate that the County Commission or the SROA had any involvement in the service district’s decision to fire him, regardless of the commission’s supervisory authority, or the fact the district board was composed of SROA members.

However, Aiken’s ruling makes no mention of the legitimacy of Kennedy’s claims against the service district, Salzer and Seator. Kennedy’s attorney, Roxanne Farra of Bend, said in an email Friday. She said discovery is under way for the aspects of the case that were not dismissed, and she expects depositions will be scheduled in April.

Among his claims, Kennedy said the SROA was displeased by his insistence that contracts for support services the SROA provided to the service district be reviewed by an outside party. The district had been paying “premium prices” to the SROA for accounting, administrative services and fleet maintenance, Kennedy’s suit alleges, and Kennedy’s efforts to discontinue the practice were not well received by the SROA.

Kennedy’s suit also claims he ran afoul of the SROA, Salzer and Seator, then members of the SROA board, during a dispute over the status of roads in Sunriver. Kennedy maintains Sunriver’s roads should be considered public highways — for a time, the roads were considered private, preventing police from enforcing traffic laws. He claims his efforts to see that state law recognized them as such pitted him against the two board members.

In retaliation, Salzer gave Kennedy an unfavorable performance evaluation, the suit claimed, while Seator allegedly pressured Sunriver officers to say they formed a union to protect themselves from Kennedy.

Kennedy’s suit also noted a dispute between Sunriver-area resident Robert Foster and the SROA, the service district and Sunriver Police. After Foster allegedly followed a Sunriver police officer home — Foster disputes the claim — Kennedy asked the SROA to bar Foster from the building shared by the SROA and the police department. The owners association refused.

Instead, Kennedy claims, the SROA asked Kennedy to file a stalking complaint against Foster. Kennedy refused; two officers who said they had been followed eventually did file a stalking complaint.

In January 2012, at a court hearing on the stalking complaint, Kennedy claimed Salzer asked Foster if firing Kennedy would help resolve the matter. Kennedy claims Foster told Salzer it would, but Salzer has since disputed the allegation.