the court found controlling a series of decisions in which this court and other courts of appeals have held that one who is prosecuted or otherwise punished for lying to the government may not defend by attacking the constitutionality of the question which elicited the lie. acanfora had argued that these cases were inapposite "because the school officials transferred him on account of his homosexuality, not the omission from his application". the court acknowledged, as the district court had found, that the transfer was not motivated by the omission from the application. nevertheless, it found the cases controlling for two reasons. first, to limit the cases to prosecution or punishment for lying would constitute "an unduly restrictive application of the principles expressed" in those cases. second, respondents should not be "prejudiced" by their failure to rely upon the omission as a motivation for transferring acanfora, for at that time they only suspected that the omission was deliberate and it was not until trial that the suspicion was confirmed. the court noted that at trial the superintendent had testified that the omission was one of the reasons which made him unwilling to reinstate acanfora, and concluded that this was sufficient to warrant application of the "lying to the government" cases.