Rasmussen University Florida Student Defense Lawyer

At Rasmussen University’s Florida campuses, three points matter most: when an instructor reports academic dishonesty, when a student conduct charge arrives, and after a nursing or allied health program has already removed them on a progression or academic standing decision. All three run on short deadlines, and all three are decided on a written record built in the first days.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Rasmussen University Florida?

Rasmussen University is a private, for-profit university, and that fact sets the frame before anything else does. A private university is not a state actor, so the Fourteenth Amendment does not reach it: no constitutional due process claim, and no petition for certiorari to a circuit court, a route that exists only against public institutions. Florida settled the private side a century ago. John B. Stetson University v. Hunt, 88 Fla. 510, 102 So. 637 (1924), holds that the relation between a student and an institution of learning privately conducted is “solely contractual in character,” with “an implied condition that the student knows and will conform to the rules and regulations of the institution.” Your case is a contract case, and the contract is the university catalog.

The second point is the one Florida students most often get backwards. Florida does have a real statutory due process code for campus discipline. Fla. Stat. § 1006.60(3) requires 7 business days’ written notice, disclosure of the evidence 5 business days out including exculpatory material, preponderance of the evidence with the burden on the institution, an appeal of right a senior administrator must hear, and at § 1006.60(3)(g) the right to a “legal representative” at “any proceeding, whether formal or informal,” who “may directly participate in all aspects of the proceeding, including the presentation of relevant information and questioning of witnesses.” That statute reaches every Florida College System institution and every state university. It does not reach Rasmussen. Whatever the catalog gives you is the whole of it.

What the catalog gives you is still worth enforcing, because Florida enforces private-school contracts with real money. In Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences, 780 So. 2d 136 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000), a fourth-year student was dismissed about two months before graduation over one failing rotation grade. A jury found the dismissal “arbitrary, capricious, and/or lacking any discernable rational basis,” and the Third District held his damages were not capped at tuition: lost future earning capacity is recoverable. A jury later awarded $813,000 past and $3.5 million future lost earnings, affirmed in Nova Southeastern University of the Health Sciences, Inc. v. Sharick, 21 So. 3d 41 (Fla. 3d DCA 2009). Tercier v. University of Miami, No. 3D22-1334 (Fla. 3d DCA Aug. 2, 2023), sets the limit: “only specific promises … in a school’s bulletins, circulars[,] and handbooks … are enforceable,” and general policy statements will not do. A breach of contract claim is built from numbered steps the university published and then skipped. And finish the internal process first: Gamma Phi Chapter v. University of Miami, 718 So. 2d 910 (Fla. 3d DCA 1998), declined to intervene before “exhaustion of an available administrative remedy.”

Where do Rasmussen University Florida cases come from?

Rasmussen enrolls roughly 3,120 students in Florida and lists six Florida locations: Central Pasco, Fort Myers, North Orlando, Ocala, Orlando and Tampa/Brandon, alongside online programs. It is part of the American Public University System, which its own accreditation statement describes as comprising American Military University, American Public University, Rasmussen and Hondros College of Nursing. That structure matters procedurally: the policies that govern you are system documents, not campus documents, and a letter may name an office that does not sit on your campus.

The programs drive the caseload. Rasmussen’s areas of study include practical nursing, professional nursing, the BSN and RN to BSN, the MSN and the DNP, along with medical laboratory technician, physical therapist assistant, radiologic technology, surgical technologist, pharmacy technician and medical assisting, plus early childhood education, criminal justice, paralegal, human services, graphic design and business. Not every program runs at every Florida campus, so confirm your own against the current catalog before assuming a rule applies to you.

The licensure-track health programs are where the most serious outcomes happen. In nursing, radiologic technology and the therapist assistant programs, the decision that ends a degree is usually not a plagiarism finding. It is removal from a clinical placement, a professionalism concern, or a progression standard that operates independently of the cumulative GPA. These are sequenced cohort programs, so one term out is usually a year, and the finding is also something a licensing or certification application may ask about later. That is why in a nursing program dismissal the sanction, the transcript notation and the disclosure language are often more negotiable, and more important, than the finding itself.

Which process are you in, and why does that matter?

The label on the letter picks the decision-maker, the clock and the protections. A student conduct charge runs under the university’s student code of conduct. An academic dishonesty allegation runs under the academic integrity policy, usually starting with the instructor. A program removal on a progression standard runs under that program’s own policy and is not a conduct case at all. A satisfactory academic progress failure is a financial aid determination with no hearing attached to it, and at a university where most students carry federal aid it ends more enrollments than any conduct charge does.

Answering in the wrong track spends the one response you get, and the clocks differ. Match your letter to the right process first: conduct code charges, academic misconduct, academic dismissal and suspension, or a SAP appeal. If the letter does not name the policy, ask in writing and keep the answer.

What should you do first?

Get the catalog edition in force on your incident date from the university’s own course catalog, not a summary, and read the appeal section before the rule you are accused of breaking. Then get your program handbook, because in a health program that document usually holds the standard you are accused of missing. Ask in writing for your response deadline, your appeal deadline, the officer who decides, and the material the decision-maker will see.

Preserve the evidence before it rotates out: drafts and version history, learning management timestamps and submission receipts, discussion board posts, group chats, clinical evaluations, competency checklists and emails with your clinical coordinator. Online and blended courses generate most of this automatically and delete it on a schedule, so ask early. Do not sit for an interview before you know what is alleged. If the accusation rests on a similarity report or an AI-detection score, read the page on AI accusations first; in an online program those tools generate a large share of the charges.

What does Rasmussen University’s own policy actually say?

Start with a correction, because this one costs students time. The page Rasmussen publishes under the heading “Code of Conduct” is not the student conduct code. It is the Code of Conduct for Educational Loans, an employee compliance policy the Higher Education Act requires of institutions that participate in federal and private student lending.

• Conduct office: not identified on the public page. What Rasmussen publishes there is the Code of Conduct for Educational Loans, which states that the Higher Education Act “requires colleges to develop, administer and enforce a code of conduct in governing education loan activities” and that “[a]ll employees of Rasmussen University must comply.” It says nothing about student discipline. Ask the dean of students’ office in writing which official receives and decides your charge.
• Governing policy: the student code of conduct is published inside the university catalog, which Rasmussen serves from a shared system catalog rather than a policy page of its own. No Florida College System rule and no Board of Governors regulation governs a private university, so there is nothing above the catalog to appeal to.
• Academic integrity: the academic integrity policy in that same catalog. Ask whether your program adds its own standard, because the health programs generally do.
• Appeal window: no campus-specific day-count located. Do not guess it and do not rely on a phone call. Ask in writing for your appeal deadline, the officer it goes to and the form it must take, and keep the reply.
• Standard of proof: no campus-specific standard of proof located in a publicly retrievable policy. Ask for it in writing. At a Florida public college the standard is fixed by statute at preponderance with the burden on the institution, § 1006.60(3)(b); a private university may set a different one or none at all.
• Advisor: no campus-specific advisor rule located. Ask, in writing and before any meeting, whether you may bring an advisor, whether that advisor may be an attorney, and whether the advisor may speak. Those three answers decide what a lawyer can do inside the room, and they can differ between the conduct track and a program committee at the same university.
• Academic standing: Rasmussen does not publish an academic standing or progression policy at a public URL. Request the current policy in writing from the dean of students’ office or the registrar and keep the response, because an inaccessible link is not adequate published notice of the standard you are being held to.

Send those requests in one dated written message before the meeting. Where the policies are system documents served from a shared catalog, editions change without notice to you, so save a copy of every section you rely on. A university that enforces a version different from the one in force on your incident date has handed you the clearest argument under Tercier: a specific written promise that was not kept.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at a Rasmussen University campus in Florida — Title IX, Title VI, or Section 504 and the ADA — is filed in a United States District Court, and Florida has three of them. I am admitted to the bars of the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida, so wherever your campus sits the federal forum is covered and no pro hac vice motion and no sponsoring local attorney is needed. There is no Fourteenth Amendment claim against a private university, and the contract claim under Stetson and Sharick is a state-law claim. Almost none of these matters reach a courtroom. What decides them is the campus record:

• Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
• Preparing your account, your documents and your questions
• Testing whether the school followed its own published procedure
• Scrutinising software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
• Helping with the written response and the appeal, where policy allows
• Serving as your advisor where the process permits one
• Negotiating sanction terms, notations and disclosure language

What a lawyer can actually do here turns on the catalog, and at Rasmussen the first job is getting the right edition of it. Some tracks allow an advisor who may be an attorney, some allow a silent advisor, some exclude outside people entirely, and a nursing progression committee often runs on different rules from the conduct office. Reading the current policy is what settles it. Until it is in hand, the work is documentary: the written response, the preserved record, and the correspondence that fixes the university to a version of its own procedure.

Other Florida universities

Every school writes its own dismissal, appeal and conduct rules, and the filing deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other Florida universities:

• Saint Leo University
• San Ignacio University
• Schiller International University
• South University Orlando
• South University Tampa
• South University West Palm Beach

Common questions about Rasmussen University Florida student cases

Is the Rasmussen page called Code of Conduct the student conduct code?

No, and this catches people out. The page Rasmussen publishes under that heading is the Code of Conduct for Educational Loans, a compliance policy the Higher Education Act requires about education loan activities, binding on employees. It contains no student discipline procedure, no appeal deadline and no standard of proof. The student code of conduct is published inside the university catalog. If you are facing a charge, ask the dean of students office in writing for the catalog section that governs it, and for the edition in force on your incident date.

Does the Florida student due process statute protect me at Rasmussen?

No. Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) requires 7 business days of notice, disclosure of the evidence 5 business days out, preponderance of the evidence with the burden on the institution, an appeal of right, and a legal representative who may question witnesses. It reaches only Florida College System institutions and state universities. Rasmussen is a private for-profit university, so neither that statute nor the Fourteenth Amendment applies to it, and there is no certiorari petition to a circuit court. The catalog is your protection.

Which federal court would hear a case from my Rasmussen campus?

Florida is divided into three federal districts, the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida, and Rasmussen operates campuses across more than one of them. I am admitted to the bar of all three, so wherever your campus sits the federal forum is covered without a pro hac vice motion or a sponsoring local attorney. That matters only for a federal claim such as Title IX, Title VI or Section 504 and the ADA. A contract claim against a private university is a Florida state-law claim.

This is general information about the matters I handle and the law that applies to them. It is not legal advice about your situation, and the law in this area can change. For advice on your matter, start with the Full Read + Game Plan — your entire file read, straight answers, and exactly what to do next, in what order. Other campuses are covered on the Florida schools page.

This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.