Cases & Developments - National Association of College and University Attorneys

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Date:
7/14/2023
Beck v. Manhattan Coll. (S.D. N.Y. June 29, 2023)
Opinion & Order granting Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a student at Manhattan College during the Spring 2020 semester, on behalf of herself and a putative class, brought contract and unjust enrichment claims against the College after it ceased in-person instruction and closed campus facilities due to the coronavirus pandemic. Previously, the court dismissed plaintiff’s contract claim, but it permitted her to proceed to discovery on her unjust enrichment claim regarding the College’s decision not to provide a tuition refund. In granting summary judgment in favor of the College, the court held, first, that retention of tuition payments was not unjust, noting (1) the declared pandemic and state-mandated shutdown of non-essential businesses and (2) the continuity not only of plaintiff’s coursework, but also of extra-curricular activities and student services at the College. It further held that the College was not enriched by retention of the payments, noting that it lost over $2 million for the fiscal year.
Topics:
Campus Police, Safety, & Crisis Management | Coronavirus
Date:
7/14/2023
Denham v. Ala. State Univ. (M.D. Ala. June 28, 2023)
Opinion & Order granting Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former professor of Occupational Therapy at Alabama State University who is a White female, brought discrimination claims against the University after she was not hired for an Associate Dean position. In granting summary judgment to the University, the court first held that plaintiff’s assertion that the successful candidate was unqualified for the position did not establish pretext, noting that although he had only one year of teaching experience the University’s faculty handbook permitted it to hire a candidate with less than five years of teaching experience at the rank of Associate Professor if that individual was deemed to have sufficient experience in a relevant field. The court further held that her assertion that the Provost’s explanation that the successful candidate “brought a lot of energy” to the interview also did not establish pretext, noting that the Provost also explained that he “spoke with ‘passion,’ particularly with respect to the role he could play as Associate Dean,” while plaintiff’s answer to why she wanted the position was “why not apply?”
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Sex Discrimination | Sex Discrimination in Employment
Date:
7/14/2023
Counterman v. Colorado (U.S. June 27, 2023)
Opinion and Order and vacating the judgment of the Colorado Court of Appeals and remanding. Billy Raymond Counterman was convicted of stalking leading to serious emotional distress and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison related to numerous social media messages he sent to a musician whom he had never met. Counterman, who suffers from mental illness and believed he was having a conversation with the musician. contended that his messages were not true threats and were, accordingly, protected by the First Amendment. The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction, noting that Colorado used an objective standard that looks to whether the recipient would reasonably perceive the statements as expressing an intent to commit an unlawful act of violence. In vacating and remanding, the Supreme Court adopted a recklessness standard, holding that “[t]he State must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence.”
Topics:
Constitutional Issues | First Amendment & Free Speech
Date:
7/14/2023
Khan v. Yale Univ. (Conn. June 27, 2023)
Opinion answering questions certified by the Second Circuit. In 2015, Jane Doe, a student at Yale University, accused plaintiff, also a student at Yale, of sexual assault. In 2018, after he was found not guilty in a state criminal trial, the University expelled him for violating its Sexual Misconduct Policy. Plaintiff subsequently sued Doe and Yale for defamation and tortious interference with a contract. Finding insufficient relevant precedent under Connecticut law, the Second Circuit certified to the Supreme Court of Connecticut regarding immunity for statements made in judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings. In response, the Supreme Court of Connecticut held (1) that “a quasi-judicial proceeding is an adjudicative one, in which the proceeding is specifically authorized by law, the entity conducting the proceeding applies the law to the facts within a framework that contains procedural safeguards, and there is a sound public policy justification for affording proceeding participants absolute immunity;” (2) that the University’s “proceeding was not quasi-judicial because it lacked important procedural safeguards;” and (3) that a qualified privilege is available to alleged victims of sexual assault who report their abuse to proper authorities at institutions of higher education, but, at this stage of the proceedings, the allegations of malice in [plaintiff’s] complaint are sufficient to defeat Doe’s entitlement to qualified immunity as a matter of law.”
Topics:
Constitutional Issues | Due Process | Students | Title IX & Student Sexual Misconduct
Date:
7/14/2023
Doe v. The Trs. of Columbia Univ. (S.D. N.Y. June 27, 2023)
Opinion and Order granting Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a Columbia University student who alleged she was sexually assaulted by John Roe in January 2019, brought a deliberate indifference claim against the University after an investigation and hearing determined that Roe was not responsible for violating the University’s Gender-Based Misconduct (GBM) Policy because she was able to consent to the sexual encounter that gave rise to the allegations. In granting the University’s motion to dismiss, the court held that plaintiff’s allegation that her avoidance of the University’s main library out of fee of seeing Roe did not deprive her of access to an educational opportunities or benefits because the University had nearly two dozen other libraries she could use. Although plaintiff alleged that the University’s GBM Policy in 2019 was ambiguous and did not provide her with the ability to present expert witnesses and to cross-examine Roe, the Court held that her claim that the University responded unreasonably failed, noting its timely response when she filed her complain, extensive investigation, subsequent detailed report and hearing, and opportunity for plaintiff to appeal, which she declined.
Topics:
Students | Title IX & Student Sexual Misconduct
Date:
7/14/2023
Jennings v. Frostburg State Univ. (D. Md. June 27, 2023)
Memorandum Opinion granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former assistant professor of biology at Frostburg State University who is non-ambulatory, brought disability discrimination, retaliation, and failure to accommodate claims against the University after his contract was not renewed. The court permitted plaintiff’s disability discrimination claim to proceed, finding material questions about the extent to which members of his department believed student course evaluations, upon which their nonrenewal recommendation was largely based, reflected biases. The court also permitted his retaliation claim to proceed, finding material questions as to whether the Provost had intended to reverse the department’s nonrenewal recommendation prior to a meeting with a department official knew of plaintiff’s requests for accommodations. The court, however, dismissed plaintiff’s failure to accommodate claim for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.
Topics:
Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation
Date:
7/14/2023
Ohio State Univ. v. Snyder-Hill (U.S. June 26, 2023)
Order denying petition for certiorari. Plaintiffs, who alleged they were among hundreds of male student-athletes at Ohio State University who were sexually abused over a period of many years beginning in 1978 by one-time athletic team doctor and university physician, brought Title IX claims against the University alleging that it was deliberately indifferent to the risk of the doctor’s abuse. Plaintiffs assert that the University forced the doctor to retire in 1998 but did not reveal the allegations against him. They further assert that when the doctor set up private practice near campus and advertised in the student newspaper, the University did not act to substantiate numerous additional complaints until 2018. The district court dismissed plaintiffs’ claims as time-barred, but the Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded, holding they had plausibly alleged sufficient grounds to delay accrual. In its June 26, 2023 Order List, the Supreme Court denied certiorari.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Employee Sexual Misconduct | Sex Discrimination | Students | Title IX & Student Sexual Misconduct
Date:
7/14/2023
Kaczmarek v. D’Youville Coll. (W.D. N.Y. June 26, 2023)
Decision and Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former professor of education and part-time archivist at D’Youville College who is a member of the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart and worked at the College since 1981, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the College after it eliminated her positions citing declining enrollments. Plaintiff’s age discrimination claim failed because she failed to show that the College’s asserted enrollment decreases in its Education Department programs were pretextual or that decisions she alleged the College made to bring about those decreases were made with the intent to discriminate against her. The court, however, denied summary judgment on her claim as to her archivist position, finding a material question as to how the cited enrollment declines affected the archivist position housed in the library and a factual dispute as to whether a College official ever stated “the nun has to go.” Her claim that the College retaliated against her when it did not investigate her complaints to the Board of Trustees about her termination failed because those complaints were subsequent to her termination and did not inhibit her from filing a claim with the State Division of Human Rights.
Topics:
Age Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Religious Discrimination & Accommodation | Retaliation
Date:
7/14/2023
Maker v. Temple Univ. (E.D. Pa. June 26, 2023)
Memorandum Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. Plaintiff, a former student in physical therapy at Temple University, brought contract and due process claims against the University after she was removed from her clinical internship due to safety concerns and dismissed from the program. The court ruled in favor of the University on plaintiff’s contract claims, finding no evidence of a promise to permit plaintiff to complete her clinical placement before assigning her a failing grade when, as here, she was deemed to be a safety risk to patients. It similarly ruled in favor of the University on her due process claims, finding (1) that the University was entitled to rely on the judgment of the clinical placement coordinator at her clinical site and (2) that it is entitled to remove a student from the internship setting based on concerns for safety and need not wait until a patient suffers injury.
Topics:
Academic Performance and Misconduct | Internships, Externships, & Clinical Work | Students
Date:
7/14/2023
Doe v. Univ. of N. Tex. Health Sci. Ctr. (N.D. Tex. June 23, 2023)
Order and Opinion granting Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former medical student at the University of North Texas Health Science Center who was permitted to take a one-year medical leave of absence, brought due process and equal protection claims against multiple officials in their individual capacities after he was dismissed from the program for failure to meet the conditions for his return, even after multiple requests from the officials. The court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on his due process claim, finding that though he claimed not to have received a hand-delivered letter outlining the conditions for his return, two email notices informing him that he faced dismissal and one informing him of his dismissal and opportunity for appeal provided sufficient notice and opportunity to be heard. The court similarly held that plaintiff’s equal protection claim failed because he did not identify a similarly situated non-disabled person who was treated differently after taking medical leave, failing to satisfy the conditions for return, and failing to respond to multiple notices in the dismissal process.
Topics:
Constitutional Issues | Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Due Process

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