Regis University Student Defense Lawyer

Regis University students reach me from two very different places. Undergraduates in Regis College and the business and computing programs call about academic integrity and conduct charges. Students in the health-professions programs call about something heavier: a failed clinical, a professionalism concern, or a progression decision that can end a career path before it starts.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Regis?

Regis is a private Jesuit university founded in 1877, with its main campus in Denver. Because it is private, the constitutional cases are not the frame; the relationship is contractual, and the student handbook, the catalog, and the program handbook are the contract. The question is whether Regis did what its own published documents promised — the theory behind breach of contract against universities. Mission language about care for the whole person is not empty in this context either: where a university publishes values, a decision that departs from them is harder to defend internally.

Where do Regis cases come from?

Regis is organized into Regis College, the Anderson College of Business and Computing, and the Rueckert-Hartman College for Health Professions, which houses the Loretto Heights School of Nursing, the School of Pharmacy, and the School of Rehabilitative and Health Sciences. Graduate programs include counseling, health services administration, nursing, physical therapy, and pharmacy. That mix determines what the cases look like: an undergraduate integrity charge on one side of the university and, on the other, doctoral health-professions students whose problems arrive as clinical evaluations rather than as charges.

Health-professions matters follow their own logic. Progression standards, remediation requirements, clinical site removals, and professionalism review sit in the program handbook rather than in the student conduct code, and they can end enrollment without any disciplinary finding. Those decisions also surface later on licensure applications, which is why the language in a remediation agreement or a dismissal letter matters as much as the outcome. The frameworks on my nursing school dismissal and clinical rotation and externship failure pages apply directly.

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

Establish which document governs before you write anything. An academic integrity allegation, a conduct charge, and an academic dismissal or suspension decision run on different tracks, and a program progression decision is different again. In health-professions programs the operative document is almost always the program handbook, and the appeal rights it grants are narrower and shorter than students assume.

What should you do first?

Get the current student handbook and, if you are in a health-professions program, the current program handbook and progression policy from Regis rather than from a summary, including this one. Calendar the deadline in writing the day the letter arrives. Request the complete file, including clinical evaluations, preceptor comments, and any remediation documentation. Preserve drafts, messages, and site correspondence. Do not sit for a meeting with a program director until you understand what the evidence is.

What does Regis’ own policy actually say?

Regis runs conduct through the Office of Community Standards and CARE within the Dean of Students Office, where the Director of Community Standards and Care makes determinations. The governing text is Section Three of The Ranger Guide 2025-2026, the official student handbook, which records “Last Revised August 2025” and “Issued October 1, 2025”; academic integrity sits separately in the Regis University Academic Catalog. Appeal requests “must be filed in writing no later than five (5) business days after the written results of the hearing are sent to the student,” and are resolved within ten business days. The standard is a preponderance of the evidence. The advisor rule is the most restrictive in the Colorado set: the student may bring “a student, faculty or staff member from the University community” as an advisor, which leaves no room for outside counsel in an ordinary Community Standards hearing, and the handbook itself warns that these procedures “do not include the same protections afforded by the courts.”

• Conduct office: Office of Community Standards and CARE, within the Dean of Students Office
• Governing policy: The Ranger Guide 2025-2026, Section Three: Community Standards — no policy number; last revised August 2025, issued October 1, 2025
• Academic integrity: Academic Integrity Policy in the Academic Catalog — faculty determination, then a College Academic Integrity Board; Regis maintains a University Academic Integrity Database recording all reported offenses, first-time violations included
• Appeal window: Five (5) business days after the written results are sent, decided within ten (10) business days. Academic issues beyond a college’s academic dean go to the Office of the Provost within fourteen (14) calendar days; the Academic Integrity Policy publishes no day-count for the Board-level appeal itself.
• Standard of proof: Preponderance of the evidence — more likely than not that a policy violation occurred
• Advisor: An advisor who must be “a student, faculty or staff member from the University community”; it is the student’s job to select the advisor and make them available for the hearing. Outside counsel has no role in an ordinary hearing. Advisor definition and scope differ in non-discrimination and sexual misconduct proceedings as regulation requires.
• Title IX / equal opportunity: Equal Opportunity and Title IX Compliance
• Disability accommodations: Student Disability Services and University Testing

Because an outside lawyer cannot sit in the hearing room, everything of value at Regis happens before it: the written statement, the choice of a University-community advisor who will actually be useful, the witness list due in writing forty-eight hours ahead, and the five-business-day appeal. One more thing to weigh early — Regis logs reported offenses, first-time ones included, in a University Academic Integrity Database, so a first finding is not a clean slate.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at Regis University — Title IX, Section 504 and the ADA — is filed in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, where I am admitted to the bar. That court grants no pro hac vice admission at all: a lawyer is either a member of its bar or cannot appear there.

• Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
• Helping you prepare your account, your documents, and your questions
• Testing whether Regis followed its own published procedures
• Scrutinizing software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
• Assisting with the written response and appeal, to the extent the policy permits
• Serving as your advisor where the process allows it
• Negotiating sanction terms, notations, and disclosure language

What a lawyer may actually do in your case depends on that school’s policy. Some tracks permit an advisor of choice who may be an attorney, some permit a non-participating advisor, and some permit no outside person at all. Reading the current policy is the first step, because it determines what form the assistance can take.

Common questions about Regis student cases

I was removed from a clinical site. Is that discipline?

Often it is not labeled that way, which is exactly the problem. A site removal can trigger a progression failure and then a dismissal without a disciplinary hearing anywhere in the sequence. The response has to engage the program’s own standards and documentation, because there may be no conduct process to use.

Does a professionalism notation follow me to licensure?

It can. Licensure and certification applications ask their own questions, and program letters are frequently part of what a board or an employer sees. Negotiating the wording of a finding, a remediation plan, or a dismissal letter is often the most valuable work available in these cases.

Regis is private. What does that change?

The legal theory, mainly. There is no constitutional due process claim, but the handbook is an enforceable set of commitments about how Regis will proceed, and departures from it are the argument. In practice the analysis depends far more on the governing policy and the facts than on whether the school is public or private.

Related Colorado pages: University of Denver, MSU Denver, CU Anschutz Medical Campus, and Colorado College. The full list is on the Colorado student defense page.

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.

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

Attorney advertising. Zachary Gaynor is licensed to practice law in Florida and is admitted to the bars of the United States District Courts for the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts of Florida, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the United States District Courts for 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. Federal court admission is not a license to practice the law of the state in which the court sits; he is not licensed in Colorado and does not advise on Colorado state law. Colorado matters are handled through the framework described on the nationwide practice page — federal-law assessment, campus-process support where the school’s policy permits an advisor, federal litigation in the District of Colorado, and association with Colorado counsel where a state-court proceeding is required.

One Colorado-specific point worth knowing before you hire anyone: the District of Colorado grants no pro hac vice admission, so a lawyer is either already a member of that court’s bar or cannot file your case there at all. Here is what that means in practice.