Just days after announcing that it was for sale, Rolling Stone learned that it still faces litigation over its retracted article about a purported gang rape at the University of Virginia, news that may complicate the magazine’s efforts to find a buyer.

On Tuesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan ruled that a lower court had erred in dismissing a defamation lawsuit filed by three former members of the fraternity at the center of the 2014 article. In the earlier decision, a judge ruled that the three men — George Elias IV, Ross Fowler and Stephen Hadford — had not shown that the article was “of and concerning” them personally, apart from the fraternity. The article was written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who was named as a defendant, along with Rolling Stone and its parent company, Wenner Media.

But in their decision, a panel of appellate judges wrote that “while it is a close call,” the district judge was incorrect when it came to two of the men, Mr. Elias and Mr. Fowler, and sent the case back to the district court for further proceedings. While none of the men were named in the article, details like the setting of the rape in a room at the top of a staircase and the description of one man as an avid swimmer could have led a reader familiar with the fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, to identify those men, according to the lawsuit.

Image The Rolling Stone article about a purported gang rape at the University of Virginia was the subject of a highly critical review of its lapses by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

The judges upheld the district court’s dismissal in the case of Mr. Hadford, whose only identifying feature seemed to be that he liked to ride his bike around campus.