Miami Dade College Medical Campus Student Defense Lawyer

The Medical Campus at 950 NW 20th Street is where Miami Dade College’s health programmes live, and it carries the highest concentration of dismissal-exposed programmes anywhere in the Florida College System. MDC describes it plainly: the campus “offers specialty disciplines in nursing and allied health.” That includes the Benjamín León School of Nursing (ASN, BSN, LPN-to-RN and practical nursing) together with dental hygiene, diagnostic medical sonography, emergency medical services, clinical laboratory science, nuclear medicine technology, opticianry, physician assistant, physical therapist assistant, radiation therapy, radiography, respiratory care, surgical technology and veterinary technology.

Why a health-programme dismissal is a different case

A student removed from one of these programmes is rarely removed by the student conduct office. The decision comes from a programme committee applying a programme handbook — a document with progression rules, clinical-performance standards, attendance limits, drug-screen provisions and automatic dismissal clauses that the college-wide code never mentions. It usually has its own appeal ladder and its own deadlines, and those deadlines are frequently shorter than the college-wide ones. Where the two documents conflict, the handbook is what the programme applies; the college code appeal should still be preserved rather than abandoned.

What is actually at stake

For most of these programmes the consequence of dismissal is not a lost semester. Clinical hours are not readily transferable, cohort places are limited and admission elsewhere requires disclosure of the dismissal. For the licensure-track programmes there is a further layer: a dismissal recorded as involving dishonesty, patient-safety concerns or a positive drug screen becomes a disclosure item on a licensure application years later. That is why the wording of the decision letter matters as much as the outcome, and why it is worth negotiating.

Programme-level NCLEX pass rates and what Fla. Stat. section 464.019(5) requires of a Florida nursing programme are on the Florida nursing programme pass-rate page.

Venue: Miami-Dade County is in the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division, under 28 U.S.C. section 89(c).

This is a public college, so Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) applies in full — including subsection (3)(g), the right to be accompanied by counsel at a disciplinary proceeding, and subsection (3)(b), which puts the burden on the college rather than the student. What those rights do and do not include is set out on the Florida student defence page.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

  • Get the current programme handbook and the edition in force when the student enrolled, and identify which one the college is applying.
  • Separate the academic-progression question from any conduct allegation; they are decided differently and appealed differently.
  • Press on the wording of the decision letter, because it follows the student into every future licensure and admission application.
  • Preserve both the programme appeal and the college-wide appeal, and work to the shorter deadline.
  • Keep the 30-day certiorari window under Fla. R. App. P. 9.100(c) open while the internal appeal runs.

The main college page is here: Miami Dade College student defence.

What Miami Dade College’s own rules actually say

A Medical Campus student is governed by three stacked rulebooks, and the strictest one usually decides the case. The College-wide standard, Procedure 4010 (Standards of Academic Progress), uses a 2.0 cumulative GPA. Almost no health-science student is ever dismissed under it, because the programme rule bites first.

In the Benjamín León School of Nursing, the Associate of Science in Nursing Student Handbook (revised June 2026) requires a minimum grade of 77% in every nursing course. A failed nursing course may be repeated once. Fail the same course twice, or fail three different nursing courses, and dismissal follows. The separate numbered rule — Policy III-IX, Program Progression and Course Repetition (last reviewed August 2025) — is harder still, because it counts a withdrawal as a failure: a “D,” “F,” “U” or “W” each count toward the same limit. Students who withdraw to protect a GPA are often surprised to learn the withdrawal already spent one of their two lives.

The Radiography Program Student Handbook (2026–2028) runs on its own numbers: a first RTE course failure means repeating the course after a full academic year’s wait, and a second failure means dismissal. The Physician Assistant programme dismisses automatically on a term GPA below 2.50, on failure to remediate any course, or on two consecutive semesters of professionalism probation.

The Exceptions Committee, and the waiver it asks you to sign

For nursing students, the body that decides progression and dismissal petitions is the School of Nursing Exceptions Committee, which the handbook calls the “final voice” on those questions. Two features matter more than anything else on this page.

First, it is a paper process. The handbook states that no hearing is conducted. Everything the Committee will ever know about a student is inside the written petition, which is why the petition is the case rather than a preliminary to it. Decisions issue within thirty working days.

Second, readmission comes at a price. A student the Committee readmits signs an agreement waiving the right to file any future grade appeal or petition, and agreeing that a D, W, F or U in any later course results in immediate and final dismissal. That is a one-strike contract for the remainder of the programme, signed at the moment a student is most relieved and least likely to read carefully. It is worth reading before signing, not after.

There is a further trap. Policy III-IX provides that where a student is programmatically dismissed and then petitions through the Dean of Students, the original dismissal remains in effect even if the petition succeeds. Winning the wrong petition does not undo the dismissal.

The deadlines that actually control

Miami Dade College publishes different clocks for different kinds of case, and they are short.

  • Student conduct (Procedure 4030): a hearing should be held within ten business days of the written complaint, and an appeal to the Campus President must be filed within ten business days of the findings. Appeal grounds are limited to the severity of the penalty and violations of the student’s rights under the procedure.
  • Academic dishonesty (Procedure 4035, revised April 2024, which now expressly covers unauthorised use of AI-generated content): a plea is due within three working days of the Notice of Charge, and an appeal to the Campus President within three working days of the certified-mail notice. Withdrawing from the course does not avoid the penalty.
  • Grade appeals (Procedure 8301, revised March 2024): the informal route through the faculty member, chairperson and associate dean is mandatory first, each step carries five business days, and the formal appeal must be filed by the end of the next major term. The campus Grade Appeal Committee’s decision is final within the College.
  • Radiography clinical matters (Policy 14): every step of the clinical appeal runs on a seven-day clock, and the handbook states that if the process is not started within the first seven days, the documentation stands as written.

Choosing the right door matters. Procedure 8301 provides that the Petitions Committee is not authorised to deal with grade changes that question a faculty member’s professional judgment of a student’s performance. A clinical failure is professional judgment, so the petition route is the wrong door and the grade appeal is the only one.

Clinical removal and patient-safety allegations

Most health-science students who lose a place lose it in a clinical setting rather than a classroom. The nursing handbook provides that unsafe practice, negligence or conduct endangering patient safety results in immediate removal from the clinical area and may lead to dismissal. Policy III-XX, Student Behaviors at Clinical Sites, is the provision students are usually charged under, and it states that deviations will result in a failing clinical grade or withdrawal from the programme. Its duties are specific: provide patient care only when the instructor is on the premises, and perform only procedures the instructor has approved.

Radiography publishes the fullest scheme, defining “abandonment” and “compromised patient care” as distinct offences with a seven-step sanction ladder, and providing that a student rejected by two different clinical education centres is dismissed. Because a clinical site can refuse a student independently of anything the College decides, a student can be removed from a programme in practice without the College ever holding a hearing.

Non-academic routes out are just as real: Complio non-compliance in a clinical semester means being dropped from the clinical course and every co-requisite lecture, lab and skills course, with the handbook stating there will be no exceptions.

Where a Miami Dade College case would be heard, and the deadline nobody mentions

Miami Dade College is a public institution of the Florida College System, and that changes the legal landscape. Section 1006.60(3), Florida Statutes, requires every Florida College System code of conduct to give a student at least five business days’ notice before a disciplinary proceeding and to disclose all known information relating to the allegation, including exculpatory information. Section 1002.21(2) provides that a public postsecondary student may be disciplined only after notice of the charges and a hearing on them.

Federal law then draws a hard line between two kinds of dismissal. In Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), the Supreme Court held that an academic dismissal does not require a hearing at all — only that the student was fully informed of the faculty’s dissatisfaction and that the decision was “careful and deliberate.” Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), added that a court may not override a genuinely academic judgment unless it is such a substantial departure from accepted academic norms as to show that no professional judgment was actually exercised. A disciplinary dismissal is different: Doe v. Valencia College, 903 F.3d 1220 (11th Cir. 2018) — a published Eleventh Circuit decision about a nursing student at a Florida College System institution — confirms that colleges must give notice and a hearing before suspending or expelling a student for misconduct.

Here is the part that catches health students out: a clinical failure counts as academic. The Eleventh Circuit applied exactly that framework in Page v. Hicks, 773 F. App’x 514 (11th Cir. 2019) (unpublished), upholding the dismissal of a nurse anesthesia student whose clinical supervisors judged her practice unsafe. Being removed from a clinical site therefore attracts less procedural protection than being accused of cheating, not more — which is why the wording of the decision letter matters so much, and why a case framed as unprofessional conduct rather than clinical deficiency may carry stronger rights.

The 30-day clock. The remedy for a student dismissed by a Florida public college is a petition for writ of certiorari to the state circuit court in Miami-Dade County, under Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.190(b)(3), and it must be filed within 30 days of the institution’s final decision under Rule 9.100(c). Decker v. University of West Florida, 85 So. 3d 571 (Fla. 1st DCA 2012), holds that review is available as a matter of right and that the clock starts when the student is told the decision is final. Missing it is not a technicality. In Sylvain v. Florida A&M University Board of Trustees, 204 So. 3d 162 (Fla. 1st DCA 2016), a student who skipped certiorari review was held to have failed to exhaust her remedies, barring her later suit. And Doe v. Valencia College holds that because Florida certiorari review is an adequate state remedy, a student who does not use it generally cannot bring a federal procedural due process claim either.

One more point worth stating plainly, because it is counterintuitive. A college’s failure to follow its own handbook does not, by itself, create a federal constitutional claim; Horowitz said so, and the Eleventh Circuit has repeated it. Broken internal deadlines matter on certiorari review, where a departure from the essential requirements of law is the standard — that is what happened in Morfit v. University of South Florida, 794 So. 2d 655 (Fla. 2d DCA 2001), where a suspension was quashed because the university ignored its own conduct code. A straight breach-of-contract suit against a Florida public college is the weakest of the three routes, because sovereign immunity requires an express written contract, which enrollment alone does not supply.

For reference, Miami lies in the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division.

Other Florida health-professional programs

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 health-professional programs:

Common questions about MDC Medical Campus cases

Which MDC campus handles nursing and allied health?

The Medical Campus at 950 NW 20th Street. MDC states that the campus offers specialty disciplines in nursing and allied health, including the Benjamín León School of Nursing, physician assistant, dental hygiene, radiography and a dozen other selective programmes.

Who actually decides a nursing dismissal?

Usually a programme committee applying the programme handbook, not the student conduct office. The handbook carries progression, clinical-performance and automatic dismissal rules the college-wide code does not mention, and often has its own shorter appeal deadline.

Why does the wording of the decision letter matter?

Because a dismissal recorded as involving dishonesty, a patient-safety concern or a positive drug screen becomes a disclosure item on licensure and transfer applications for years afterwards. The outcome and the characterisation are separately worth negotiating.

Can I bring a lawyer to the hearing?

Miami Dade College is a Florida public college, so Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3)(g) gives a student the right to be accompanied by counsel at a disciplinary proceeding. Programme-progression meetings are often treated as falling outside that, which is itself worth contesting.