Cases & Developments - National Association of College and University Attorneys

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Latest Cases & Developments

Date:
7/21/2023
Rogoff v. Long Island Univ. (N.Y. Sup. Ct. July 6, 2023)
Decision/Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a tenured professor of business and former dean of the Brooklyn School of Business at Long Island University, brought contract, age discrimination, and retaliation claims against the University after it declined to renew his administrative contract and reduced his salary to that of a full professor. The University also changed his status to adjunct faculty with loss of benefits after he presented a University Trustee with a “memo of concerns” critical of the University’s administration, though it later revoked the decision. The court awarded summary judgment to the University on plaintiff’s contract claim, holding that a contract provision referencing “other terms and conditions of employment … in accordance with University policy,” without more, was insufficient to support his expectation of a sabbatical year and salary of at least 75% of his prior administrative salary. It permitted him to proceed on his age discrimination and retaliation claims with respect to his demotion to adjunct status, finding conflicting pre-trial testimony and the temporal proximity between his “memo of concerns” and his demotion sufficient to raise triable issues of fact.
Topics:
Age Discrimination | Contracts | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation
Date:
7/21/2023
Bennett v. Tarrant Cnty. Coll. Dist. (N.D. Tex. July 5, 2023)
Memorandum Opinion and Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former Executive Vice President for Advancement with the Tarrant County College District (TCCD), brought retaliation and contract claims against TCCD after its then-Chancellor placed her on an executive development plan and declined to renew her contract following her decision to counsel a subordinate employee related to a workplace conflict. Plaintiff offered, but attempted to withdraw her resignation and was subsequently placed on administrative leave after she filed an internal grievance against the Chancellor. Prior to her last day, she also filed discrimination and retaliation charges with the Texas Workforce Commission and the EEOC. The court permitted plaintiff’s Title VII retaliation claim to proceed, finding sufficient temporal proximity between her EEOC charge and TCCD’s refusal to permit her to withdraw her resignation. The court, however, dismissed her contract claims, holding that (1) that TCCD’s policies against discrimination and retaliation do not create a contractual right where Title VII is the exclusive remedy, (2) that its policies did not specifically and expressly limit its ability to terminate at-will employees, and (3) that plaintiff had not sufficiently pleaded a violation of TCCD’s “Freedom from Reprisals” policy because counseling her subordinate was not a “complaint” within the meaning of the policy.
Topics:
Contracts | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation
Date:
7/21/2023
Hudgins v. Bd. of Educ. (N.D. Ill. June 30, 2023)
Memorandum Opinion and Order granting-in-part Defendants’ Motions to Dismiss. Plaintiffs, two former Chicago Public Schools students, sued the Chicago Board of Education, the David Lynch Foundation (DLF), and the University of Chicago, asserting that a “Quiet Time” program allegedly incorporating elements of Hindu religion and Transcendental Meditation violated the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment. The program was administered by DLF pursuant to a services contract and evaluated by the University pursuant to a “Master Services Agreement” for research and evaluation of various projects involving students. Plaintiffs allege that they felt pressured to engage in prayer and meditation practices that were inconsistent with their own religious beliefs. The court permitted plaintiffs to proceed against both the Board and DLF, finding the assertion of the services contract between the Board and DLF sufficiently alleged a policy or practice as required to establish Monell liability under §1983. It dismissed their claims against the University, however, finding that its “Master Services Agreement” for evaluation of educational programs did not sufficiently allege involvement in such a policy or practice.
Topics:
Constitutional Issues | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Religious Discrimination & Accommodation
Date:
7/21/2023
O’Brien v. The Regents of the Univ. of Cal. (Cal. App. June 29, 2023)
Opinion affirming denial of a Writ of Mandate. Plaintiff, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who was censured and suspended for a year in 2020 related to an allegation that he sexually harassed a graduate student from another institution, at an overseas conference in 2012, sought a writ of mandate setting the sanction aside, asserting multiple procedural violations. In affirming denial, the California Court of Appeals first held that the University’s three-year rule on disciplinary proceedings was not triggered by a 2014 complaint that lacked sufficient allegations to warrant an investigation but was triggered in 2017 when the graduate student submitted a complaint. The court then affirmed the Privilege and Tenure Committee’s interpretation of the Faculty Code of Conduct that held that the prohibition on discrimination against or harassment of a “colleague” included a graduate student from another institution attending an overseas conference. Finally, the court also held that plaintiff failed to show that the sanction was unsupported by the evidence in the record or was the result of an unfair proceeding.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Employee Sexual Misconduct | Sex Discrimination
Date:
7/14/2023
Saeedy v. The Regents of the Univ. of Cal. (9th Cir. July 10, 2023)
Memorandum reversing dismissal and remanding. Plaintiff, a former student at the University of California, Irvine who was diagnosed with dyscalculia, brought a failure to accommodate claim against the University after it informed him there was no appropriate equivalent for the math requirement for the political science major. The district court dismissed his claim as time barred, holding that his claim accrued when he received a letter from the Dean of the School of Social Sciences denying his request for a waiver. In reversing and remanding, the Ninth Circuit held that plaintiff had plausibly alleged that he continued to pursue accommodations through the Department of Humanities and did not know of his injury until that request was ultimately denied.
Topics:
Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity
Date:
7/14/2023
Porter v. Bd. of Trs. of N.C. State Univ. (4th Cir. July 6, 2023)
Opinion affirming dismissal. Plaintiff, a tenured professor in the College of Education at North Carolina State University, brought First Amendment retaliation claims against the University, University officials, and multiple colleagues after he was removed from a student advising role in the program and assigned an additional course to teach due to his lack of collegiality in criticizing efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the School and the field. In affirming dismissal, the Fourth Circuit held that plaintiff’s comments to his colleagues about department operations were unprotected speech. Plaintiff had also written a personal blog post characterizing a professional association as “woke” that was mentioned during the keynote address at the association’s conference. Though the court assumed the post was protected speech, it nevertheless held that plaintiff failed to establish it as the but-for cause of his removal because the blog post lacked temporal proximity and he did not address his colleagues’ frustration that he had not proactively addressed student and faculty concerns about the controversy.
Topics:
Constitutional Issues | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | First Amendment & Free Speech | Retaliation
Date:
7/14/2023
Palmer v. Liberty Univ. (4th Cir. June 30, 2023)
Opinion affirming summary judgment in favor of the University. Plaintiff, a former studio art professor at Liberty University who was 79 at the time, brought an age discrimination claim against the University after it declined to renew her contract, citing increased demand for digital arts course offerings. In affirming summary judgment in favor of the University, the Fourth Circuit held, first, that two comments made by University officials suggesting that plaintiff might wish to characterize her departure as a retirement were not direct evidence of discrimination because they were made only after the decision not to renew her contract. It similarly held that a comment that plaintiff seemed “resistant to change” did not support an inference of discrimination because her Chair and Dean had both informed her multiple times over a two-year period that she needed to improve her technology and digital art skills, which she took no steps to do. Accordingly, the court held that plaintiff’s prima facie case failed because she had not demonstrated she had met the University’s legitimate expectations. Finally, having resolved the statutory issue in favor of the University, the Fourth Circuit vacated the district court’s denial of the University’s assertion of the First Amendment “ministerial exception” defense, citing the doctrine of constitutional avoidance.
Topics:
Age Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity
Date:
7/14/2023
Tex. Tech Univ. Health Scis. Ctr.-El Paso v. Niehay (Tex. June 30, 2023)
Opinion reversing the judgment below and dismissing for lack of jurisdiction. Plaintiff, a former medical resident in the Texas Tech University School of Medicine emergency-medicine department who was 5’9’’ tall and weighed approximately 400 pounds, alleged disability discrimination under the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act (TCHRA) after her residency was terminated following multiple professionalism and patient safety concerns, asserting that she was dismissed due to her obesity. Interpreting the language of the TCHRA, the Supreme Court of Texas held that weight is a physical characteristic and that obesity constitutes an impairment only when it is caused by an underlying physiological disorder or condition. It then held that because plaintiff had presented no evidence that she had or that the University perceived her to have an underlying disorder or condition, her disability discrimination claim failed. Without such an evidentiary showing, the University was entitled to sovereign immunity as a state institution.
Topics:
Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity
Date:
7/14/2023
Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard Coll. (U.S. June 29, 2023)
Opinion and Order reversing the judgments of the First Circuit and Middle District of North Carolina. Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA), a nonprofit membership organization whose members believe that “racial classifications and preferences in college admissions are unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional,” sued Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, challenging their admissions practices under the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI. In reversing the judgments of the lower courts, the Supreme Court held that Universities’ admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Without explicitly overruling Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) the Court held that “[b]oth programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”
Topics:
Admissions | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Students
Date:
7/14/2023
Groff v. DeJoy (U.S. June 29, 2023)
Opinion and Order vacating the judgment of the Third Circuit and remanding. Petitioner, a former Rural Carrier Associate with the United States Postal Service (USPS) who observes Sunday Sabbath, sued the USPS under Title VII after efforts to have other carriers cover his Sunday shifts failed, leaving him to resign rather than face progressive discipline for declining to work on Sundays. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the USPS, and the Third Circuit affirmed. In vacating the judgment of the Third Circuit, the Supreme Court held that lower courts have erred in interpreting an “undue hardship” “to mean any effort or cost that is ‘more than … de minimis.’” Rather, to establish that an accommodation would impose an undue hardship “an employer must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.” The Court further held that in evaluating such claims “courts must apply the test in a manner that takes into account all relevant factors in the case at hand, including the particular accommodations at issue and their practical impact in light of the nature, ‘size and operating cost of [an] employer.’”
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Religious Discrimination & Accommodation

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