The District of Columbia’s Superior Court dismissed the lawsuit, a decision that was upheld in 2005 by the Court of Appeals. Howard declined to comment, aside from confirming that she earned her degree there.

By about 2008, Ms. Dolezal had moved West and was telling people that she was black or partly black. Officials at the N.A.A.C.P. chapter in Spokane, and at the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where she had previously worked, said she had also represented herself to them as being partly of black descent. It was a claim she also made in news media interviews and in an application to the City of Spokane for a seat on the Office of Police Ombudsman Commission, to which Mayor David A. Conton appointed her last year.

In a joint statement on Monday, the mayor and Ben Stuckart, president of the Spokane City Council, said, “We have referred the matter to the city’s ethics commission for a determination as to whether the answers she gave on her application for the volunteer position violated the city’s code of ethics.”

Officials also confirmed on Monday that even before questions were raised about her race, the city had started an unrelated investigation into Ms. Dolezal. That inquiry, first reported by The Spokesman-Review newspaper, “relates to her behavior on the commission,” said Brian Coddington, a city spokesman, but he declined to elaborate.