Chicago State University: Student Discipline, Dismissal & Federal Court

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Chicago State?

Chicago State is a public university of 2,505 students (fall 2025, by its own Factbook) in Chicago, in Cook County, accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, with accredited nursing, occupational therapy, health information and pharmacy programs. Its conduct code, last revised in May 2015, cuts both ways. On appeal, “the burden of proof shifts to the sanctioned student.” Yet the same code promises that “When possible, sanctions will be given for a particular offense as established by previous decisions in similar cases” — a consistency rule most schools never write down.

Chicago State University is a public university, so two bodies of law apply on top of its own handbook. The first is constitutional due process: the university is a state actor, and Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), requires notice of the charge and a meaningful chance to respond. The second is the deference courts give genuine academic judgment — Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), and Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), under which an academic decision stands unless it is such a substantial departure from accepted academic norms that no professional judgment was actually exercised.

The Seventh Circuit adds a hurdle that decides many of these cases at the pleading stage. There is no free-standing property interest in a public university education; a student has to point to a specific promise, such as a promise not to be dismissed without good cause, and Charleston v. Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois at Chicago, 741 F.3d 769 (7th Cir. 2013), dismissed a medical student’s due process claims for not doing so, adding that there is no fundamental right to a graduate education. The other route is liberty: in Doe v. Purdue University, 928 F.3d 652 (7th Cir. 2019), a formal finding of sexual violence that changed the student’s status, and that the university itself disclosed to the Navy, was enough — and the court held that a process in which panel members had not read the investigative report, the evidence was never shared with the student, and the decision-maker never heard from the accuser fell short of what even a high school must provide.

Illinois adds structural points that catch people out. Review of the university’s decision does not run through the Administrative Review Law, because the enabling acts do not adopt it; the vehicle is a common-law writ of certiorari in the circuit court — Dusthimer v. Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, 368 Ill. App. 3d 159 (2006) — on which the court asks whether the body proceeded legally and whether the evidence supports what it did. Money damages go somewhere else again: the state universities are arms of the State, and the Court of Claims Act, 705 ILCS 505/8, sends contract claims against the State and tort claims against the named university boards — Chicago State University’s among them — to the Illinois Court of Claims. In federal court the university likewise has Eleventh Amendment immunity (Moore v. Watson, 838 F. Supp. 2d 735 (N.D. Ill. 2012), applied that to Chicago State), so the federal route is prospective relief against university officials in their official capacities. The state-court counterpart is Leetaru v. Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, 2015 IL 117485: a student may seek an injunction in circuit court where university officials act in violation of law or in excess of their authority — but the bar is a fundamental disregard of core rules, not a technical slip, and it is a remedy for a proceeding that is still running.

A federal claim arising at Chicago State University is filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois — Cook County sits in its Eastern Division under 28 U.S.C. § 93(a), and the statute fixes the places of holding court for that division at Chicago and Wheaton. I am a member of the general bar of that court, admitted on my Florida license under its Local Rule 83.10, which opens the general bar to an attorney in good standing before the highest court of any state. That means a Title IX, Section 504, ADA or due process complaint for a Chicago State student is one I file and litigate under my own name, with no pro hac vice motion. The Northern District abrogated its local-counsel designation rule in July 2023, so a member of its bar with no office in the district no longer has to designate local counsel. One limit, stated plainly: the court keeps a separate trial bar, and under Local Rule 83.12 a general-bar member who is not on it — that is me — appears alone in everything except testimonial proceedings, meaning evidentiary hearings and trial, where a trial-bar member must sit as advisor unless the judge grants the rule’s narrow waiver.

The conduct code: one official presents and decides

Conduct and academic-misconduct cases run under the Student Code of Conduct (Article X, Section 2, Policy 2.1). The Director of Judicial Affairs opens the case at a Preliminary Meeting, “may later serve as the University’s presenter,” and, once a five-member panel finds a violation by a preponderance of the evidence, “shall determine whether to impose the panel’s recommendation or modify it.” You may request “a maximum of one academic day” to plead. The code says both “fifteen (15) days” and “fifteen (15) working days” for when the hearing follows. Advisors, including any “non-university individual,” must be named in writing 48 hours before the hearing and may only advise.

An instructor may settle an academic misconduct case alone, with a grade as low as F for the course, only “If the facts of the incident are not disputed by the student”; a disputed charge goes to Judicial Affairs and a hearing. The Dean of Students may impose temporary sanctions before any hearing, and the code publishes no way to contest them.

Five working days, and the burden shifts to you

Appeal by written Petition to the Dean of Students “within five (5) working days following the notification of the disciplinary sanction” — working days being days the University is open, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. The Dean screens it, and only a petition stating a recognized ground reaches the three-to-seven-member committee: procedural error that substantially affected the outcome, no evidence in the record, new evidence, or an “excessively severe” sanction. Among seventeen listed non-grounds: “Claims of discrimination to dispute a hearing outcome when the record does not evidence discrimination occurred.” Any sanction also triggers an automatic registration and transcript encumbrance, and “ALL SANCTIONS REMAIN IN EFFECT DURING THE APPEAL PROCESS.”

Pharmacy: escalating citations and a clause about lawyers

The Pharmacy Handbook 2026–2027 adds professionalism citations. A second Level 1 warning, or a Level 1 whose recipient skips the meeting, escalates automatically to Level 2 and the Pharmacy Professionalism Committee, which may “addend citations to include unprofessional behaviors demonstrated during case hearings.” Appeal is to the Dean “within ten (10) working days” of notification, though the same section also routes non-academic cases to the School Grievance Committee. And if a student chooses legal counsel, “it is beyond the scope of the Professionalism Committee”: “the student will present their case to the University in presence of University counsel.”

Dismissal is grade-driven; triggers include more than three non-passing grades in a year, more than four in the program “regardless of successful remediation or repeat,” more than one F, a failed second attempt, or six years without finishing. An Academic Standing Committee decision may be appealed by documented petition to the Dean “before the onset of the next semester.”

Reinstatement and sexual misconduct

An undergraduate below a cumulative 2.00 is on probation and can be “dropped for poor scholarship.” The way back is an academic petition to your college by its posted deadline, reviewed by the Academic Petitions Committee on the 15th of each month.

Sexual harassment runs under a separate Title IX Sexual Harassment Policy: a live hearing at which each party’s advisor, who “may be, but is not required to be, an attorney,” asks the questions; preponderance of the evidence; and an appeal “within seven (7) days” of receiving the determination. The policy does not say whether these are calendar or business days, so count calendar days. For sexual misconduct, the federal rule is the 2020 Title IX regulation: the 2024 rule was vacated nationwide on January 9, 2025, in Tennessee v. Cardona, and on September 29, 2026 the Department of Education formally repealed it and restored the pre-2024 text (91 Fed. Reg. 61,308).

What a student defense lawyer can do here

Most of the value is early and quiet: reading Chicago State’s policy against what was done, writing the response or appeal on the grounds the code recognizes, preserving Title IX, Section 504, ADA and FERPA issues in the record, and finding comparators. Here comparators rest on the code’s own promise of consistency with “previous decisions in similar cases”; ask in writing for de-identified prior outcomes. Because the appeal burden is yours and discrimination arguments are barred unless the record shows them, the record must be built at the hearing. In pharmacy, bringing a lawyer changes the forum — a deliberate choice; see professionalism concerns.

What a lawyer cannot do is turn a campus hearing into a trial: no rules of evidence, no discovery, and the university decides its own case. The written record is everything.

The one Illinois statute that gives you procedure

Illinois has no general statute setting notice periods, hearing formats, standards of proof or appeal rights for college students. The Illinois School Code, 105 ILCS 5, has a detailed suspension and expulsion scheme, and it applies to elementary and secondary schools, not here. The exception is the Preventing Sexual Violence in Higher Education Act, 110 ILCS 155, and it is a real one. It reaches every higher education institution in the state — public universities, community colleges, and private not-for-profit and for-profit institutions alike — and it requires timely written notice of the allegations to all parties, an investigation that is adequate, reliable and impartial, written notice of the outcome, and appeal rights. It requires the school to make confidential advisors available, trained to a statutory standard and kept separate from the people deciding the case. Both parties are entitled to an advisor of their choice, and that advisor may be an attorney — although the institution may limit how far an attorney-advisor participates in a hearing, which is why Chicago State’s own rule on that, set out above, still governs what your lawyer may do in the room. The standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence, applied the same way to both sides.

What to do first

1. Count the deadline: five working days (conduct), ten working days (pharmacy professionalism), “seven (7) days” with no unit (Title IX). If your notice gives an earlier date, use it.
2. Download what governs you — the conduct code, the Pharmacy Handbook 2026–2027, the Title IX policy — and save dated PDFs.
3. Dispute an academic-misconduct accusation in writing, so it goes to Judicial Affairs.
4. Name your advisor and witnesses, with a summary of each witness’s testimony, in writing at least 48 hours before the hearing.
5. Put disability or discrimination issues in the record now; the Illinois overview covers other schools.

One honest caveat about geography. Illinois has three federal districts. I am admitted to two of them, the Northern and the Southern. A federal claim arising at a school in Springfield, Peoria, Champaign-Urbana or the Quad Cities falls in the Central District; I am not a member of that bar, and those matters I handle with local counsel in that district or by pro hac vice admission. Appeals from the Northern District go to the Seventh Circuit, which keeps its own bar; my appellate admission is in the Eleventh. I say so before a retainer rather than after.

Where I am licensed. I am licensed to practice law in Florida. I am admitted to the bars of the U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida, the District of Colorado, the Northern and Southern Districts of Illinois, the District of Nebraska, the District of New Mexico, and the Western District of Wisconsin, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Federal court admission is not a license to practice the law of the state in which the court sits. I am not licensed in Illinois and do not advise on Illinois state law or appear in Illinois state court.

The federal money on the line at Chicago State

Chicago State University students and families took on $22.7 million in federal Direct Loans in the 2025–26 award year — with 232 graduate and professional students also borrowing through Grad PLUS.

Every dollar of it rides on academic standing. A dismissal, a failed Satisfactory Academic Progress evaluation, or a mid-term withdrawal sets off federal rules that decide whether aid continues, whether money already disbursed has to go back, and — under the borrowing caps in effect since July 1, 2026 — whether a student who leaves can still finance a return. The academic fight and the financial aid fight are the same fight, and the windows are short. How those rules work: SAP appeals and academic dismissal.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Data Center, Direct Loan volume by school, award year 2025–26 (cumulative through June 30, 2026). Institution-wide federal Direct Loan totals.

Other schools in the Northern District of Illinois

Every school writes its own dismissal, appeal and conduct rules, and the deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other schools in the Northern District of Illinois:

• Chicago Theological Seminary
• Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology
• Columbia College Chicago
• Concordia University Chicago
• DePaul University
• DeVry University (Illinois)

Common questions about Chicago State student cases

How long do I have to appeal at Chicago State?

Five working days from notification of the sanction, by written petition to the Dean of Students, counting only days the University is open. State your grounds and attach your documents: the burden of proof shifts to you, and the sanction stays in effect meanwhile. Pharmacy professionalism appeals: ten working days, to the Dean.

Can I bring a lawyer to a Chicago State hearing?

As an advisor, yes, but the conduct code limits any advisor to advising, and the name is due 48 hours ahead. In pharmacy professionalism cases, choosing legal counsel moves the case out of the Professionalism Committee to the University, with University counsel present. In a Title IX hearing, your advisor, who may be an attorney, asks the questions.

What standard of proof does Chicago State use?

Preponderance of the evidence at the conduct hearing and again on appeal, where the code adds that “the burden of proof shifts to the sanctioned student.” The Title IX policy also uses preponderance. Pharmacy academic standing turns on the handbook’s grade rules instead, so the question is whether they were applied correctly.

Can Chicago State’s pharmacy school dismiss me without a hearing?

For grades, in practice yes: the handbook dismisses on set triggers, such as more than one F or failing a course twice. Students facing dismissal “will be called upon by the Academic Standing Committee,” and the decision can be appealed by documented petition to the Dean, whose decision is final, before the next semester begins.