Malcolm X College (City Colleges of Chicago): Student Discipline, Dismissal & Federal Court

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Malcolm X College?

Malcolm X College is a public community college at 1900 West Jackson Boulevard, with a satellite West Campus — the City Colleges’ center of excellence in healthcare, where the district runs most of its health programs and every nursing class. It is one of the seven City Colleges of Chicago that form Community College District No. 508, accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. College-wide discipline follows the district’s Academic and Student Policy manual, but for a nursing student the first rulebook is a different one: the City Colleges of Chicago School of Nursing handbook states that “Policies in this handbook supersede CCC policies to comply with regulations and accreditation standards.” Its rules include a zero-tolerance marijuana policy that applies “whether it is recreational or medicinal.”

Malcolm X College is a public community college, so two bodies of law apply on top of its own policies. The first is constitutional due process: the college 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). In the Seventh Circuit a due process claim also needs a protected interest: there is no free-standing property interest in a public education, and a student has to point to a specific promise the college made — Charleston v. Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois at Chicago, 741 F.3d 769 (7th Cir. 2013).

Illinois law treats a community college differently from a state university, and the difference matters. A community college district is a local public entity, not the State: it falls under the Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act, 745 ILCS 10/1-206, not the Court of Claims Act, so a breach-of-contract claim against it is brought in circuit court — see Luciano v. Waubonsee Community College, 245 Ill. App. 3d 1077 (1993). Review of the board’s disciplinary decision does not run through the Administrative Review Law, which the Public Community College Act does not adopt for these matters; the route is a common-law writ of certiorari (or mandamus) in the circuit court — Maas v. Board of Trustees of Community College District No. 529, 94 Ill. App. 3d 562 (1981). For the City Colleges, that district is Community College District No. 508, and Inwang v. Community College District No. 508, 117 Ill. App. 3d 608 (1983), confirmed that the district board’s action is reviewable by mandamus or certiorari rather than under the Administrative Review Act. And in federal court the district is not an arm of the State and has no Eleventh Amendment immunity — Hostrop v. Board of Junior College District No. 515, 523 F.2d 569 (7th Cir. 1975) — so under Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), it can be sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 where its own policy or custom caused the constitutional violation.

A federal claim arising at Malcolm X College 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 Malcolm X College 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.

In nursing, the handbook outranks the manual

The School of Nursing’s Associate in Applied Science program is accredited by ACEN, whose most recent decision, the program discloses, is “Accredited with Conditions.” Its 2025–2026 handbook sets the progression rules that end most nursing careers here:

• 80 percent to pass. A C starts at 80; anything lower is a failure, and so is a withdrawal while below 80 percent.
• Two failures and out. “If a student fails two separate courses or the same course twice, this will result in dismissal from the A.A.S program.” A failed course must be repeated the next term it is offered, within one year.
• Clinical counts double. An unsatisfactory lab or clinical evaluation caps the course grade at D, and missing the 90 percent dosage-calculation mark after the allowed attempts (three in year one, two in year two) does the same.
• A thirty-day window back. A student who fails must request reinstatement “within 30 days of notification of academic status” — the handbook does not say calendar or business days — after an exit interview with an Associate Dean of Nursing. The Progression and Readmission Committee decides, and students get “one application and reconsideration.”
• No way back from some dismissals. A second course failure ends eligibility, and students “dismissed for a clinical violation/incident or unprofessional behavior/conduct will not be readmitted.”

Clinical removal and the drug-screen rules

The handbook defines unsafe clinical performance as “the inability to safely meet the needs of the client,” lists examples from professional-conduct violations to failing to communicate serious changes in a patient’s health, and provides that “Patient endangerment, incompetence, unethical conduct, or disruptive behavior will result in removal from the clinical education setting and/or dismissal from the program.” Alcohol, controlled substances on clinical grounds and falsified client records mean immediate dismissal.

The drug-screen section attaches three different consequences to a bad test. A positive or invalid nine-panel screen without acceptable provider documentation must be cleared by a negative retest within 48 hours; a second failure means failing the clinical for “medical non-compliance,” with a chance to retake the course. A positive marijuana test means dismissal: the program says it “follows the Federal law related to marijuana use.” And a second failed screen “during or after re-admission” means “immediate dismissal without the opportunity to return.” The handbook does not say which paragraph controls when they overlap. It does say “Nursing students have the right to appeal any disciplinary decision” under the district manual.

Radiography’s 2025–2026 handbook warns that a social-media or HIPAA violation can bring immediate dismissal and a bar from other Malcolm X health or nursing programs; its grievance steps run in business days, starting with a conference request within three business days; and readmission is allowed once.

When it becomes a district conduct case

The district code leaves clinical misconduct to program policies that “may result in dismissal of a student from a program,” but suspension or dismissal from the college runs through the district process. At Malcolm X, a complaint is filed on the college’s Formal Discipline Complaint Form with the Associate Dean of Student Services. You then have two academic days to answer in writing, a hearing before a committee of at least five, one observer who may not speak, and the burden of presenting your own case. Malcolm X’s 2026 Annual Security Report says the committee decides on the preponderance of the evidence, with written charges at least 24 hours ahead. An appeal is due within ten academic days of the President’s decision. Sexual misconduct goes to the district EEO Office within 180 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 the handbook and manual against what the program did; writing the reinstatement request or appeal on the grounds the rules recognize; preserving Title IX, Section 504, ADA and FERPA issues; and finding comparators among students with the same failure or screen.

Here the specific moves are about timing and paragraph choice. A nursing dismissal leaves one reinstatement application, so it must be complete the first time, with the remediation plan and evidence of what has changed. In a drug-screen case, the provider documentation has to arrive inside 48 hours, and the argument is often which of the handbook’s competing paragraphs applies. A clinical removal labeled “unprofessional conduct” deserves a challenge to the label itself, because that label alone forecloses readmission.

The limit: none of these processes is a trial — no discovery, no rules of evidence, and the program decides first — so the written record built now is what a court would later review.

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 Malcolm X College’s own rule on that — the district rule 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. Diary thirty days from any notice of academic status, and treat them as calendar days.
2. After a positive or invalid screen, get provider documentation in within 48 hours, and ask in writing which handbook paragraph is being applied.
3. Collect the clinical evaluation tool, any clinical contract and your remediation plan.
4. In a conduct case, answer within two academic days and appeal within ten.
5. Save the 2025–2026 handbook as a dated PDF. My Illinois student defense page 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 Malcolm X College

Malcolm X College students took on $1.9 million in federal Direct Loans in the 2025–26 award year.

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 college writes its own conduct, academic-standing and appeal rules, and the deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other community colleges in the Northern District of Illinois:

• McHenry County College
• Moraine Valley Community College
• Morton College
• Oakton College
• Olive-Harvey College (City Colleges of Chicago)
• Prairie State College

Common questions about Malcolm X College student cases

Can Malcolm X College dismiss me from nursing without a hearing?

For academic failure, yes: under the progression policy a second course failure is the dismissal, and the route back is a written reinstatement request to the Progression and Readmission Committee within 30 days. For misconduct, the handbook says nursing students may appeal any disciplinary decision under the district manual, and removal from the college runs through the district hearing process.

How long do I have to request reinstatement to the Malcolm X College nursing program?

Thirty days from notification of your academic status. The handbook does not say whether those are calendar or business days, so count calendar days. You must complete an exit interview and your remediation plan and meet all admission and progression requirements, and you get one application and reconsideration.

Will a positive marijuana test get me dismissed from nursing at Malcolm X College?

The handbook says it will: the program follows federal law on marijuana and applies zero tolerance “whether it is recreational or medicinal.” A positive or invalid screen of any kind must be supported by provider documentation or cleared by a negative retest within 48 hours.

How many nursing courses can I fail at Malcolm X College?

One. Failing two separate courses, or the same course twice, means dismissal from the A.A.S. program. A failure includes a D or F and a withdrawal while below 80 percent, and an unsatisfactory clinical or lab evaluation caps the course grade at D.

How long do I have to appeal a discipline decision at Malcolm X College?

For a district conduct decision — a suspension longer than five academic days, a college dismissal or an expulsion — ten academic days from receiving the College President’s decision. Program decisions follow the program handbook’s own route; radiography, for example, runs its grievance steps in business days, starting with three.