Cases & Developments

Opinion affirming summary judgment in favor of Rhode Island College. Plaintiff, a former student in the Master of Social Work Program at Rhode Island College who describes himself as a “conservative libertarian,” brought First Amendment claims against the College and multiple officials, alleging that his instructors rejected several advocacy project proposals aligned with his political perspective and then retaliated against him by assigning poor grades and by granting him only one conditional extension on the due date for his final project. In affirming summary judgment in favor of the defendants, the Supreme Court of Rhode Island held that plaintiff’s claim was barred by qualified immunity, noting that in the context of the “great deference” afforded to “academic decisions concerning grades, coursework, and progress within an academic program” it would be unreasonable to expect that faculty would have “had fair warning that their conduct potentially violated his constitutional rights.”