The College of the Florida Keys Student Defense Lawyer

Students at The College of the Florida Keys call at three moments: when an instructor reports cheating or plagiarism, when the Student Conduct Officer sends a written charge under the Student Code of Conduct, and, usually too late, when an academic suspension letter arrives. All three run on short clocks, and all three turn on a written record built in the first week.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at The College of the Florida Keys?

The College is public, one of the 28 Florida College System institutions named in Fla. Stat. § 1000.21(5) and governed by its own District Board of Trustees. Because it is public, the Fourteenth Amendment reaches what it does to you: Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), requires notice and an opportunity to be heard before a suspension for misconduct, while 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), set the narrower review a court gives academic judgment. In most states that floor is the whole analysis. In Florida it is not the important part.

The important part is a statute. Fla. Stat. § 1006.60(3) prescribes the minimum due process every Florida College System institution’s code of conduct must give you. The headline is § 1006.60(3)(g): you have the right to an “advisor, advocate, or legal representative,” at your own expense, 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.” There is no sanction threshold and no formality threshold on that right. Alongside it sit § 1006.60(3)(b), putting the burden on the College to prove a violation by a preponderance of the evidence; § 1006.60(3)(a), requiring written notice at least 7 business days out and, at least 5 business days out, the witness list and all known information “including inculpatory and exculpatory information”; and § 1006.60(3)(h), an appeal of right a senior administrator must hear. Nothing in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico or Wisconsin comes close, which is why a lawyer is worth hiring at the campus stage. That is the subject of the page on due process at public institutions.

Enforcement runs through one door, and it closes fast. Fla. Stat. § 120.81(1)(g) removes §§ 120.569 and 120.57 from any proceeding determining a student’s substantial interests, so there is no DOAH hearing and no administrative appeal to toll anything. Review is by common-law certiorari in the circuit court under Fla. R. App. P. 9.030(c)(3) and 9.190(b)(3), and Fla. R. App. P. 9.100(c) requires the petition within 30 days of rendition. Louis v. University of South Florida, 181 So. 3d 578 (Fla. 2d DCA 2016), and Couchman v. University of Central Florida, 84 So. 3d 445 (Fla. 5th DCA 2012) (en banc), both transferred student appeals into circuit court; yours would go to the circuit court for Monroe County, where the College sits. Be honest about the ceiling too. No published Florida decision has reviewed a Florida College System institution’s student discipline at all, and Polk State College District Board of Trustees v. Fisher, No. 6D23-161 (Fla. 6th DCA Feb. 9, 2024), makes a damages suit against a state college close to unavailable.

Where do The College of the Florida Keys cases come from?

The College enrolls roughly 1,025 students on one small campus in Key West and awards associate and baccalaureate degrees. Its own non-discrimination notice lists its career and technical fields: culinary management, education, emergency medical services, engineering technology, hospitality and ecotourism, public safety, diving and underwater technology, marine engineering, management and seamanship, construction trade apprenticeships, and nursing and allied health. It adds that admission to some of them “is based on selective criteria through a separate application process.” That is the whole problem in a dismissal case: getting back in is a second admissions decision.

The heaviest outcomes land in the licensure-track programs, where a finding follows you to a licensing board. A nursing program dismissal here usually means a year out, because the sequence runs once; the same is true of emergency medical services and the diving and marine programs, where clinical, field and vessel placements sit on one calendar. When the sequence is the constraint, the sanction is more negotiable, and more important, than the finding.

The other pattern worth naming is academic integrity. The College handles Academic Integrity Violations “at the faculty member’s discretion,” each instructor stating a policy in the syllabus, and escalates to the Code of Conduct only where there are “multiple violations and/or the violation was particularly egregious.” The same allegation can be a grade dispute one week and a code charge the next, and only the second carries the full § 1006.60(3) package. If the accusation rests on a similarity report or an AI-detection score, read the page on AI accusations first.

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

The label on the letter picks the decision-maker, the deadline and the protections, and the College runs four tracks. A Code of Conduct charge goes to the Student Conduct Officer, who investigates, hears and decides. A discrimination or harassment allegation goes to the Civil Rights Compliance Officer. An academic integrity problem starts with your instructor. An academic suspension is a status decision appealed to the Student Services Appeals Committee, not a hearing at all.

Only the first two carry the statutory package. Academic standing does not: Beheshtitabar v. Florida State University, 432 So. 2d 166 (Fla. 1st DCA 1983), applies Horowitz and holds no formal hearing is owed for an academic dismissal, which “requires an expert evaluation of cumulative information and is not readily adapted to the procedural tools of judicial or administrative decision-making.” Nobody can promise you hearing rights in a GPA case. Match your letter to the right track first: academic misconduct, conduct code charges, or academic dismissal and suspension. If the letter does not name the provision, ask in writing; § 1006.60(3)(a) entitles you to “the citation to the specific provision of the code of conduct at issue.”

What should you do first?

Get the current Student Handbook from the College’s own site rather than a summary, and read the appeal section before the charge section. Get the syllabus, the assignment instructions and the lab, clinical or vessel policy for the course. Put every deadline in writing, and ask the Student Conduct Officer for the § 1006.60(3)(a) disclosure: the witness list and all known information, inculpatory and exculpatory, at least five business days before the hearing.

Preserve everything before it rotates out: drafts and version history, learning management timestamps, repository commits, group chats, clinical and preceptor evaluations, dive and lab logs. Do not sit for a conference before you know what is alleged and under which section. Two statutory points matter on day one. Under § 1006.60(3)(d) you may remain silent, and “such silence may not be used against the student.” Under § 1006.60(1) the College may withhold your diploma or transcript until you finish a sanction or pay a fine, so the way out is completing it, not a demand letter, as the page on transcript holds explains.

What does The College of the Florida Keys’ own policy actually say?

The College’s rules are board-adopted rules that live on its own website, not in the Florida Administrative Code, because Fla. Stat. § 120.81(1)(e) excuses educational units from filing them. The handbook is the document.

• Conduct office: the Student Code of Conduct in the Student Handbook, administered by the Student Conduct Officer, with the Civil Rights Compliance Officer holding original jurisdiction over discrimination and harassment.
• Governing policy: the College’s own Student Code of Conduct, adopted under Fla. Stat. § 1006.60(1) and § 1001.64(8)(f), citing Board Rule 7.510 for hearing rights and Board Rule 7.750 for emergency suspension. Hazing at a college is Fla. Stat. § 1006.63, not § 1006.135.
• Academic integrity: handled at the faculty member’s discretion under the syllabus, with multiple or egregious violations charged under the Cheating and Plagiarism sections of the Code of Conduct.
• Appeal window: five workdays from the decision, in writing, to the Civil Rights Compliance Officer or the appropriate Vice President; plagiarism and cheating go to the Vice President of Academic Affairs. A student suspended or expelled has a further five workdays to petition the President, who decides “typically within fifteen (15) workdays.” Then the 30-day certiorari clock. Note that the handbook lists the Civil Rights Compliance Officer as both an original decision-maker and an appeal destination, while § 1006.60(3)(h) says whoever hears the appeal “may not have directly participated in any other proceeding related to the charged violation.”
• Standard of proof: the handbook says the determination “shall be made using the standard of clear and convincing.” That is higher than the preponderance floor in § 1006.60(3)(b), which is to your advantage. Hold the College to its own words.
• Advisor: read this against the statute. The handbook says an advisor “must be a member of the College Community and may not be an attorney,” that “advisors are not permitted to speak or to participate directly in any hearing,” and that questions are “directed to the SCO, rather than to the witness directly.” Fla. Stat. § 1006.60(3)(g) says the opposite, and Florida International University v. Ramos, No. 3D21-1281 (Fla. 3d DCA Oct. 20, 2021), is a plagiarism case in which a circuit court quashed a finding because the student was barred from questioning the accusing witness about bias.
• Academic standing: the College publishes no academic standing or satisfactory academic progress policy at a public URL. The handbook outlines probation and suspension, including a two-week window to appeal a suspension to the Student Services Appeals Committee, but there is no standalone document to link. Request the current version in writing from student services and keep the reply, because a policy you cannot reach is not adequate published notice.
• Title IX and equal opportunity: the Title IX Coordinator sits in the Office of Advancement; the Civil Rights Compliance Officer handles discrimination and harassment.
• Disability accommodations: Student Accessibility Services, within Student Success Services.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at The College of the Florida Keys — Title IX, Section 504 and the ADA, or Fourteenth Amendment due process — is filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where I am admitted to the bar. Monroe County sits in that district, so no pro hac vice motion and no sponsoring local attorney is needed. Most of these matters never get there. 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

Here policy and statute disagree, and later review is on the record, under the three-part standard restated in Haines City Community Development v. Heggs, 658 So. 2d 523 (Fla. 1995). The objection must be preserved during the campus process, not saved for the appeal or court review.

Campuses and locations

One college-wide student conduct code and one academic-standing policy govern every location listed here — none of these campuses is separately accredited or separately reported, and none publishes its own conduct code. What does change from campus to campus is the selective or clinical program a student was dismissed from, which typically has its own program handbook with its own dismissal and appeal rules, and the administrator who handles the matter.

Every location below sits in the same federal district, so venue does not turn on which campus a matter arose at. The divisional courthouse is given for each.

Campus lists change. Locations were verified against the college’s own published locations page and county assignments were derived from 28 U.S.C. section 89; if a campus has opened, closed, or moved since, the college’s current listing controls.

Other Florida College System colleges in the same federal court

All twenty-eight Florida College System institutions are bound by the same statute — Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3), which gives a student an advisor, advocate or legal representative who may question witnesses, puts the burden on the college at a preponderance, and supplies an appeal of right. What differs between them is how faithfully each handbook reflects it, and several do not reflect it at all.

These colleges sit in the Southern District of Florida, with divisional courthouses at Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Fort Pierce and Key West. A federal claim arising at any of them is filed in that court, where I am admitted to the bar.

• Broward College
• Indian River State College
• Miami Dade College
• Palm Beach State College
• South Florida State College

Colleges in the other two districts are indexed on the Florida schools page — and note that several individual campuses sit in a different district or division from their own college’s main campus, which is set out in the campus table on each college’s page. For the statutory framework, the thirty-day certiorari deadline, and the colleges whose handbooks contradict section 1006.60(3) in writing, see Florida student defense. Where the dismissal came from a nursing or allied-health programme, that programme usually has its own handbook with its own rules — see nursing school dismissal and clinical removal.

The handbook contradicts the statute in two places, and it is the current edition

This is not a historical problem with an old document. The breach is confirmed in the 2025-26 handbook.

Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) binds every Florida College System institution: (3)(g) a legal representative who may participate and question witnesses; (3)(b) preponderance with the burden on the college; (3)(a) seven business days’ notice and five business days’ disclosure including exculpatory material; (3)(h) an appeal of right.

The College of the Florida Keys’ handbook bars attorneys as advisors and forbids advisors from speaking — the opposite of (3)(g), which grants a legal representative who may participate and question witnesses. It also routes witness questions through the Student Conduct Officer, which is the precise defect at issue in FIU v. Ramos.

And it names the Civil Rights Compliance Officer as both the original decision-maker and the destination of the appeal, which runs against (3)(h)’s appeal of right to a senior administrator. An appeal heard by the person who made the decision is not an appeal.

One provision cuts the student’s way and is worth keeping. The handbook’s stated standard of proof is “clear and convincing” — twice — which is above the (3)(b) preponderance floor. Do not argue that one away. If you are the respondent, hold the college to the heavier burden it wrote for itself while also insisting on the (3)(g) representation it tried to remove. Note the direction though: a higher standard helps a respondent and hurts a complainant, so which side you are on decides whether to press it.

Taken together, the pattern is of a code that was never conformed to section 1006.60 at all, which is the most useful thing to be able to say about a handbook.

The other Florida colleges whose handbooks depart from the statute, and the thirty-day certiorari deadline that follows a final decision, are set out on Florida student defense.

Common questions about The College of the Florida Keys student cases

Can I bring a lawyer to a College of the Florida Keys conduct hearing?

The statute says yes. Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3)(g) gives a student at any Florida College System institution the right to an advisor, advocate or legal representative at any proceeding, formal or informal, who may directly participate in all aspects of it, including questioning witnesses. The College’s own handbook says an advisor must be a member of the College Community, may not be an attorney, and may not speak. Both rules cannot be right, and the statute is the floor. Raise it in writing before the hearing.

How long do I have to appeal a College of the Florida Keys discipline decision?

Five workdays from the decision, in writing, to the Civil Rights Compliance Officer or the appropriate Vice President; cheating and plagiarism go to the Vice President of Academic Affairs. If you are suspended or expelled, you have a further five workdays to petition the President, who typically decides within fifteen workdays. An academic suspension is different, and that appeal goes to the Student Services Appeals Committee within two weeks. After the campus process ends, a certiorari petition is due within 30 days.

What standard of proof applies at a College of the Florida Keys hearing?

The handbook says the Student Conduct Officer decides using the standard of clear and convincing evidence. That is higher than the statutory minimum in Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3)(b), which requires the institution to carry the burden by a preponderance of the evidence. The higher standard favours you, so hold the College to the words it published. What the statute adds is the burden: proving the violation is the College’s job, and under section 1006.60(3)(d) your silence may not be used against you.

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.