Login
Home  |  Legal Resources  |  Publications

Cases & Developments

FILTERS

Find by DATE
Reset

Latest Cases & Developments

  • Date:

    Zow v. Bd. of Governors of the Univ. of N.C. (E.D. N.C. Mar. 26, 2024)

    Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former Chief of Staff to the Chancellor and Assistant Secretary to the Board at North Carolina Central University, brought First Amendment retaliation and other claims against the University after he was terminated in October 2021 for failure to comply with a requirement that unvaccinated employees who travel domestically self-quarantine and test negative for COVID-19 before returning to work. Plaintiff alleged that his termination was in retaliation for his participation on the University’s COVID-19 Operations Continuity Committee where he opposed the mandatory vaccination policy that was eventually adopted. In dismissing his First Amendment retaliation claim, the court found that plaintiff’s opposition to the proposed policy, which included his belief that the policy would violate federal and state laws, was not protected activity because it occurred during the normal course of his ordinary duties; and moreover, plaintiff claimed that in response to his concerns his supervisor paused adoption of the policy to seek further legal review. The court dismissed his ADA retaliation claim as untimely and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over his state-law claims.   

    Topics:

    Campus Police, Safety, & Crisis Management | Constitutional Issues | Coronavirus | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Faculty & Staff | First Amendment & Free Speech | Retaliation

  • Date:

    Sloan-Brown v. Meharry Med. Coll. (M.D. Tenn. Mar. 26, 2024)

    Memorandum Opinion granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former lab coordinator at Meharry Medical College, brought discrimination and retaliation claims against the College after she was terminated for alleged insubordination and unsatisfactory performance. The court granted summary judgment to the College on plaintiff’s Equal Pay Act claim after rejecting portions of two affidavits, finding affiants failed to articulate any basis for personal knowledge supporting their conclusory assertion that plaintiff and a male comparator with a different job description actually performed the same work. In denying summary judgment on her retaliation claims, the court found that although it was undisputed that her 2017 complaint with the EEOC lacked temporal proximity to her December 2019 termination, there was a material question as to whether plaintiff had made other complaints to College personnel after July 2019. Plaintiff abandoned her Title VII discrimination claim.   

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Faculty & Staff | Retaliation | Sex Discrimination | Sex Discrimination in Employment

  • Date:

    Farah v. W.Va. Univ. Bd. of Governors (N.D. W.Va. Mar. 26, 2024)

    Memorandum Opinion and Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Partial Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a tenured Associate Professor of Public Administration at West Virginia University who is Jewish and of Italian national origin, brought discrimination claims against the University related to his initial denial of tenure in 2017, denial of promotion to full professor in 2023, and several asserted irregularities in the administration of a research grant for which plaintiff was principal investigator. The court dismissed plaintiff’s claims related to the 2017 initial tenure denial and the alleged irregularities in the grant administration as time barred. Although he had not listed the claim in his EEOC charge and was eventually promoted to full professor, the court permitted plaintiff to proceed on his failure to promote claim, finding at this stage that he might have been harmed by not being promoted in February 2023 and that the claim was within the scope of what would follow from a reasonable administrative investigation into his allegations.   

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Race and National Origin Discrimination | Religious Discrimination & Accommodation

  • Date:

    Locke v. N.C. State Univ. (E.D. N.C. Mar. 25, 2024)

    Order certifying interlocutory appeal. Plaintiff, a former soccer player at North Carolina State University, brought Title IX claims against the University, alleging that between 2015 and 2017 the team trainer, who was also the University’s director of sports medicine, abused him sexually, including by directing him to shower in front of him and by touching him inappropriately under the guise of performing a sports massage. A Title IX investigation found that in early 2016 the head soccer coach notified the senior associate athletic director that he suspected the trainer was engaged in sexual grooming of male student-athletes, at which point the trainer was moved to more administrative duties. The court dismissed plaintiff’s claim, holding that “an allegation of grooming behavior, without more, does not constitute actual notice of ‘an incident of sexual harassment’ as required to hold an educational institution liable under Title IX.” In certifying the question to the Fourth Circuit, the court noted that “the question of whether ‘grooming’ is sexual harassment for Title IX purposes is a question of first impression in this circuit.” 

    Topics:

    Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Employee Sexual Misconduct | Sex Discrimination | Student Athlete Issues | Students

  • Date:

    Adams v. The Vanderbilt Univ. (M.D. Tenn. Mar. 19, 2024)

    Memorandum Opinion granting Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiffs, the parents of a student at Vanderbilt University who died by suicide, brought negligence, disability discrimination, and contract claims against the University, after the student made suicide attempts in Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 before his passing in Summer 2021, all in University dormitory rooms. In dismissing plaintiffs’ wrongful death claim, the court declined to find a “special relationship and resulting affirmative duty of care … where a university requires a student to live on campus, the student has reported suicidal thoughts to the university, and the student has previously attempted suicide,” noting that no Tennessee court has recognized such a duty and under an “Erie-guess” the Supreme Court of Tennessee was unlikely to do so. In dismissing their disability discrimination claims, the court noted the lack of allegation that the student had ever requested an accommodation. In dismissing their contract claim, the court found no factual allegations of an express contract or breach of an implied contract created by the student-university relationship.

    Topics:

    Campus Police, Safety, & Crisis Management | Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Distressed & Suicidal Students | Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Students | Tort Litigation

  • Date:

    Mundy v. Bd. of Regents for Univ. of Wis. Sys. (W.D. Wis. Mar. 19, 2024)

    Opinion and Order denying Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff, a former graduate student in bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, twice sued the University after it became clear she would not successfully complete the requirements for a master’s degree. At the time, department officials proposed to move her from the “research track” to the “coursework track” and make exceptions to the coursework track requirements so that she could exit the program with a degree. Preferring the research track degree, plaintiff refused and sued for disability discrimination. After that action ended in summary judgment in favor of the University in January 2022, plaintiff demanded that the University immediately award her the coursework track degree with a graduation date of August 2020. When the department concluded she had not met the requirements for that degree, plaintiff sued again, this time alleging retaliation. In denying the University’s motion for summary judgment, the court held that although it was clear she had not satisfied the requirements for the degree, a reasonably jury could find that officials changed their stance of generosity toward plaintiff due to her first lawsuit.   

    Topics:

    Academic Performance and Misconduct | Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Retaliation | Students

  • Date:

    Kane v. Loyola Univ. of Chi. (N.D. Ill. Mar. 18, 2024)

    Memorandum Opinion and Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiffs, ten current and former female students at Loyola University of Chicago between 2012 and 2022, brought pre- and post-assault Title IX deliberate indifference claims against the University, alleging that the University underreported sexual assault statistics, had regular delays in processing Title IX complaints, engaged in lax enforcement of no-contact orders, and departed from its established procedures for Title IX hearings. Except for one plaintiff whose assault occurred overseas during a study abroad program, the court found the allegations sufficient for the pre-assault deliberate indifference claims to proceed. Though it credited information derived from a 2016 student newspaper article about underreporting of sexual assault cases toward the allegations of pre-assault deliberate indifference, the court found no allegation that plaintiffs were aware of the article at the time and declined to find at this stage that their claims accrued with the publication of the article. Though most of plaintiffs’ post-assault deliberate indifference claims were time barred, the court found allegations of delays, unenforced no-contact orders, and other departures from procedure sufficient to permit two plaintiffs to proceed. The court dismissed the negligence and contract claims of the remaining plaintiffs as insufficiently pled and time barred.   

    Topics:

    Students | Title IX & Student Sexual Misconduct

  • Date:

    U.S. Dep’t of Education DCL on FVT/GE Reporting Requirements (Mar. 29, 2024)

    U.S. Department of Education Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) on Regulatory Requirements for Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment. The DCL outlines the (1) information regarding programs and individual students that institutions will be required to report; (2) calculations the Department will make based on that data and earnings information it anticipates receiving from the IRS; and (3) range of consequences, by program type, for programs that do not achieve the minimum specified outcomes on the Department’s metrics. In both the DCL and a related Electronic Announcement (GE-20-01), the Department extended the deadline for FVT/GE reporting to October 1, 2024. The announcement also notes that ED plans to publish the first FVT/GE metrics and notify institutions of failing GE programs in early 2025.   

    Topics:

    Accreditation, Authorizations, & Higher Education Act | Financial Aid, Scholarships, & Student Loans | Higher Education Act (HEA) | Students

  • Date:

    ACE Letter to ED re: FAFSA Implementation Concerns (Mar. 28, 2024)

    Letter from the American Council on Education (ACE) and 15 other higher education associations to the U.S. Department of Education on the FAFSA implementation process. The letter requests that ED “fully communicate all information regarding the FAFSA process to institutions in a timely manner and provide the necessary support to ensure they can make the process as smooth as possible for both current and incoming students.” The letter also shares the results of a survey conducted by ACE, EDUCAUSE, and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) assessing institutions’ needs and concerns in the process. 

    Topics:

    Financial Aid, Scholarships, & Student Loans | Students

  • Date:

    ACE Letter to ED re: Proposed Rule on NRC Program and FLAS Fellowship Program (Mar. 25, 2024)

    Letter from the American Council on Education (ACE) and 16 other higher education associations to the Department of Education on the Proposed Rule on the National Resource Centers (NRC) Program and the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship Program. The letter expresses support for the proposed definition of “diverse perspectives,” noting that it “will help clarify the requirement in Section 602 of the Higher Education Act that grants reflect ‘diverse perspectives’ as authorized by Congress.” It expresses concern that a new requirement that Centers have a geographically defined focus might adversely impact some Centers. It also urges the department not to eliminate the institutional payment component of the FLAS Fellowship Program in favor of one payment to the student, noting potential “negative impact on both the institution and the fellow, including higher tuition fees for the student and in some cases loss of health insurance.”   

    Topics:

    Accreditation, Authorizations, & Higher Education Act | Contracts | Grants, Contracts, & Sponsored Research | Higher Education Act (HEA)

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register