Suing a School: What I Am Actively Litigating

Most student matters should never reach a courtroom, and most of mine do not. They are won inside the school’s own process, on the school’s own rules, before anything is filed. But a practice that cannot credibly file is a practice a school can wait out — and institutions know the difference. Whether a lawyer actually litigates is among the first things a university’s counsel checks when one appears on a matter.

I litigate. This page is about that side of the work: what is in court now, what I take to court, and what a lawsuit against a school actually involves — including the parts that argue against filing one.

What is in court right now

I am actively litigating student matters in both federal and state court against universities. Client identities, institutions, and case specifics are not published here — a matter being a public record does not make it mine to advertise, and I do not put clients on a website to market a practice. Described generally, the active work includes:

• Disability claims — Section 504, the ADA, and Title III against a private institution. Accommodations denied, approved and then not implemented, or treated as optional by a program, with an academic or clinical consequence that followed.
• Breach-of-contract claims. Handbooks, catalogs, and published policies enforced as what they are — terms the institution wrote and then did not follow.
• A putative class action on behalf of students. Where a policy or practice affected a group rather than one person, the individual case is the wrong instrument.

Matters are pending in Florida state court and in federal district court. I am admitted in Florida, in the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts of Florida, in the District of Colorado, in the Northern and Southern Districts of Illinois, in the District of Nebraska, in the District of New Mexico, in the Western District of Wisconsin, and in the Eleventh Circuit. The six out-of-state admissions are federal only. They let me file and litigate a federal case in those courts under my own name; they are not licenses to practice Colorado, Illinois, Nebraska, New Mexico, or Wisconsin state law.

Two things are worth saying about that list. First, it is small on purpose. I take the cases I can actually carry, which is why I turn down more than I accept. Second, none of those matters started as a lawsuit. Every one began as a student with a notice and a deadline, and became litigation only because the school left nothing else.

What I take to court

Due process

The school ignores its own handbook, skips a hearing it promised, or decides first and papers the process afterward. At a public institution that is a constitutional problem as well as a contractual one. The work is enforcing the process you were actually owed — and, where the school has mislabeled a punishment as an academic judgment, establishing what the decision really was.

Professional-program dismissal

A medical, nursing, pharmacy, dental, or law student removed late in a program, often after years and six figures of investment, sometimes weeks from a degree, a match, or a licensure application. These are the highest-stakes matters I handle and the ones where timing matters most, because the goal is to stop the dismissal while the student is still enrolled. Reinstating a student who has already been separated is a materially harder problem than preventing the separation.

Title IX and misconduct findings

A finding that rests on an investigation that was not one — evidence not gathered, exculpatory material ignored, cross-examination denied where it was required, an appeal reviewed by nobody. The applicable federal regulations have been rewritten more than once in recent years, and which version governed your proceeding depends on when it happened. That is a real issue, not a technicality, and it is one of the first things I check.

Section 504 and the ADA

Accommodations denied or ignored, and a disability-related failure recorded as though it were an academic one. A large share of academic dismissals are accommodation failures wearing a different label. These are frequently the strongest claims a student has and the ones they arrive least aware of, because the harm looks like a bad grade.

And sometimes the case is not yours alone. Where the harm came from a uniform decision — a promised discount withdrawn, a rotation year the program could not staff, a fee collected for something that did not exist — the individual appeal is the wrong instrument. See class actions against universities for what certifies, what does not, and the arbitration clause that ends most of them.

When litigation is the right tool — and when it is not

Litigation is slow, expensive, public, and adversarial in a way campus proceedings are not. It also changes the relationship permanently: the school stops being an institution you are negotiating with and becomes an opposing party with counsel. Sometimes that shift is exactly what a matter needs. Often it is the last thing a student wants, because what the student wants is to graduate.

The honest test is not whether you were treated unfairly. Unfairness is not a cause of action. The test is whether a specific legal duty was broken, whether the record proves it, whether a court can remedy it, and whether that remedy is worth what it costs to obtain. I will tell you when the answer is no. That answer is common, and it is not a lesser service — a student told plainly that the courthouse will not help has been spared years and a great deal of money spent learning it slowly.

Two situations move the needle toward filing. The first is a consequence about to become permanent — a dismissal taking effect, a transcript notation posting, a licensure application coming due — where only a court can stop the clock. The second is a school that has stopped engaging: the internal process is exhausted, the answer is no, and nothing short of a complaint produces a different conversation.

The claims, and their limits

There is no general claim for “my school was unfair.” A complaint is built out of specific theories, each with its own elements and its own ceiling.

Due process reaches public institutions, which are state actors. A student facing suspension is entitled to notice and an opportunity to respond. Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975). How much more is owed turns on a distinction students most often get wrong: Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), separates disciplinary dismissals, where the school accuses you of doing something, from academic ones, where it judges your work — and academic decisions carry far less procedural protection. Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), further instructs courts to defer to genuine academic judgment. Schools understand that advantage and reach for the academic label. Establishing that a dismissal was actually punitive is often the whole ballgame. Private institutions are not state actors and generally owe no constitutional due process at all.

Section 504 and the ADA reach schools receiving federal funds — nearly all of them, public and private — and require reasonable accommodation in coursework, clinicals, testing, and discipline. These claims live or die on documentation created at the time, which is why the accommodation file should be preserved early.

Title IX is privately enforceable. Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U.S. 677 (1979). Where the claim is the school’s response to harassment, the damages standard is demanding — actual notice and deliberate indifference. Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, 524 U.S. 274 (1998); Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629 (1999).

Breach of contract is the theory that reaches private schools where the Constitution does not, and it is frequently the most useful one in the case, because it holds the institution to the document it wrote. The work is unglamorous and decisive: line up what the policy required against what the school did.

FERPA is raised constantly and misunderstood almost as often. It creates no private right of action — you cannot sue for damages under it. Gonzaga University v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273 (2002). What it does give you is a right of access to your education records, which, used early, is one of the most valuable tools available: it produces the record before the school knows what you intend to do with it.

Why most of these cases never go forward

Most students who call me have been told they have a strong case. Usually they have a strong grievance. Those are different things, and the difference is a rule that almost no handbook mentions.

When a school makes a decision it can fairly call academic, courts do not second-guess it. The Supreme Court said in Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), that a court may override a genuine academic judgment only where it is such a substantial departure from accepted academic norms as to show that the person or committee responsible did not actually exercise professional judgment. That is not a close-call standard. It asks whether anyone was thinking at all.

The procedural side is just as narrow. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), held that a student dismissed on academic grounds is owed notice of the faculty’s dissatisfaction and a careful, deliberate decision — and no hearing at all. A student dismissed for misconduct gets considerably more. A student dismissed for grades gets considerably less.

Three consequences follow, and they decide most cases before anyone files:

The burden is on the student, and disagreement is not enough. Showing that the faculty was wrong, or that reasonable academics would have decided differently, does not meet the standard. The question is not whether the judgment was correct. It is whether it was a judgment.

Professionalism counts as academic. Students are often surprised that a dismissal for attitude, comportment or fitness is treated with the same deference as a failed exam. The Sixth Circuit held exactly that in Al-Dabagh v. Case Western Reserve University, 777 F.3d 355 (6th Cir. 2015), and the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits have reached the same place. So has the Eastern District of Michigan more recently in Eid v. Wayne State University, 599 F. Supp. 3d 513 (E.D. Mich. 2022).

The handbook rarely rescues you on its own. In Sugg v. Midwestern University, 105 F.4th 345 (5th Cir. 2024), a handbook said two course failures would “typically” result in dismissal; the court read that word as discretion, not a promise, and applied academic deference even though the school was private. In Morris v. Yale University, 63 A.3d 991 (Conn. App. 2013), the handbook allowed three attempts at Step 1, but the student had been readmitted on probationary terms that controlled instead.

Grades specifically are the hardest ask of all. In Alejandro v. Palm Beach State College, 843 F. Supp. 2d 1263 (S.D. Fla. 2011) — the district where I practice — the court declined to order a failing grade changed to an incomplete, because a professor’s grading decision is not the sort of thing courts are equipped to redo. Notably, the same court found the student likely to succeed on a separate disability-access claim. That split is the whole point of the next section.

The three doors that do open

Academic deference is a wall in front of one question: was the academic judgment sound? It is not a wall in front of every question. Three routes go around it, and nearly every case worth filing runs through at least one.

The decision was not really academic. Deference attaches to the substance, not the label. Where a school calls something academic but its own rules treat it as misconduct, the label does not hold. In Nelson v. Spokane Community College, 469 P.3d 317 (Wash. Ct. App. 2020), a failing grade imposed for plagiarism was recharacterised as a disciplinary sanction, because the college’s own regulations defined plagiarism as a conduct matter requiring a hearing. In Siblerud v. Colorado State Board of Agriculture, 896 F. Supp. 1506 (D. Colo. 1995), internal memoranda showed the stated academic reason was not the real one. This is why the first thing I ask for is the school’s own written procedure, and the second is everything the school wrote internally.

Discrimination law does not defer. The deference doctrine grew up in constitutional due-process cases. It does not travel intact into statutory discrimination claims — a point the California Court of Appeal made squarely in Khoiny v. Dignity Health, 76 Cal. App. 5th 390 (2022). Under Section 504 and the ADA, courts have let claims past the pleading and summary-judgment stages where a student identified comparators who were treated better, as in North v. Widener University, 869 F. Supp. 2d 630 (E.D. Pa. 2012), or where the school never considered a disability it had been told about, as in Steere v. George Washington University, 368 F. Supp. 2d 52 (D.D.C. 2005).

The school did not do the little that was required. Horowitz asks for very little, which cuts both ways: when a school cannot show it gave notice of the problem or that anyone deliberated, the failure is conspicuous. Two live handbooks with different deadlines, a committee that never met, a decision made before the meeting — these are the facts that matter, and they are usually in the file rather than in the student’s memory.

What a court can actually give you

This is where expectations most need adjusting. What students want is reinstatement — the seat back, the record corrected, the degree finished. Courts can order that, but it is equitable and discretionary, and against a genuinely academic judgment it is hard to get.

Money damages are narrower than people assume. Under the federal anti-discrimination statutes that reach schools through federal funding, Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, P.L.L.C., 596 U.S. 212 (2022), holds that emotional distress damages are not available — which removes what many students assume is the core of their case. Punitive damages are unavailable as well. Barnes v. Gorman, 536 U.S. 181 (2002). What remains is economic loss, equitable relief, and, where a statute allows it, attorney’s fees.

One more hard truth belongs here rather than buried in a fee discussion. Schools know students want reinstatement rather than money, and some use it: litigate slowly, then, shortly before a ruling they expect to lose, offer the seat back with nothing attached. That is a real outcome and often a good one for the student — but it dictates how a case must be structured and funded from the start, and a lawyer who does not raise it with you at the outset is not being straight with you.

The relief that is not money, and why it is the whole case

Read the paragraph above carefully and you will see something most students miss. Cummings and Barnes are about damages. They say nothing about injunctions. The Supreme Court closed the door on emotional distress and punitive awards under the funding statutes and left every equitable remedy standing exactly where it was.

That changes what a student case is for. If you came here expecting a settlement check to be the point, the law is going to disappoint you. If what you actually want is your record clean, your seat back, and your school’s account of you corrected before it reaches a licensing board, then the remedies that survived are the ones you wanted in the first place. I litigate these cases for the order, not the check. Here is what that order can say.

Expungement, and taking the notation off

A wrong disciplinary record is a continuing injury, not a past one. That distinction is doing real work. Because the record keeps harming you every time it is disclosed, an order erasing it is prospective relief — which is what keeps the claim alive against a state university whose sovereign immunity would otherwise bar a damages suit. The Fourth Circuit put expungement of an academic record and vacatur of the underlying findings squarely in that category in Doe v. University of North Carolina System, 133 F.4th 305 (4th Cir. 2025). District courts have done the same. Doe v. Purdue University, No. 4:18-cv-89, 2024 WL 1907046 (N.D. Ind. 2024); Doe v. University of Southern Indiana, 2024 WL 3511251 (S.D. Ind. 2024).

Expungement is not only for the finding itself. It reaches the notation on the transcript, the flag in the conduct database, and the line in the file that the registrar reads from when a third party calls.

Transcript correction, grade changes, and the retroactive fix

Courts will not regrade your exam. They will correct a grade the school arrived at by breaking its own rules. That is a narrower and more useful proposition than it sounds. In Sylvester v. Texas Southern University, 957 F. Supp. 944 (S.D. Tex. 1997), the court ordered a grade changed where the university had not followed its own procedures. In R.W. v. Columbia Basin College, 572 F. Supp. 3d 1010 (E.D. Wash. 2021), removal of failing grades from the transcript was treated as prospective injunctive relief.

The same logic supports the fixes students most often need and rarely ask for by name: a W in place of an F, a retroactive withdrawal for the term the illness or the accommodation failure fell in, a corrected enrollment status, and the release of a hold that is being used as leverage. These are small orders that change a transcript permanently.

Reinstatement, readmission, and the degree

Courts can order a school to take you back, and they do. Jones v. Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina, 704 F.2d 713 (4th Cir. 1983); Doe v. University of Nebraska, 451 F. Supp. 3d 1062 (D. Neb. 2020); Doe v. Trustees of Indiana University, 496 F. Supp. 3d 1210 (S.D. Ind. 2020); Betts v. Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia, 198 F. Supp. 2d 787 (W.D. Va. 2002).

But winning a due process claim does not automatically put you back in the seat. The remedy for a defective hearing is usually a proper one. Jones v. Snead, 431 F.2d 1115, 1117 (8th Cir. 1970); see Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593 (1972). Any lawyer who tells you a procedural win means automatic reinstatement has not read the remedy cases.

The do-over — the most underrated order in this practice

An order sending the matter back for a hearing that is actually run properly is the relief courts grant most readily, and clients undervalue it most. Schools rarely reach the same result the second time. The first hearing happened in private, without a lawyer at the table, without cross-examination, and without anyone expecting to be reviewed. The second one happens on a record, with a federal judge who has already found something wrong, and with a panel that knows it. That is a different proceeding, and it produces different outcomes.

Accommodations, ordered forward

Where the case is about disability rather than discipline, the injunction can simply require the school to provide what it refused. In Doe v. Samuel Merritt University, 921 F. Supp. 2d 958 (N.D. Cal. 2013), a preliminary injunction kept a student enrolled and secured licensing-examination accommodations while the case ran.

Timing is a trap here. Once you are no longer enrolled, a court may find nothing left to enjoin. Rhodes v. Southern Nazarene University, 554 F. App’x 685 (10th Cir. 2014). Students who wait to see whether the appeal works sometimes wait past the point where the strongest remedy still exists.

Controlling what the school says about you afterwards

For anyone heading toward a license, this is often the real stake. The dean’s letter, the MSPE, the professionalism notation, the answer the school gives a residency program, a state board, or a bar character and fitness committee — these outlive the dismissal by decades. Courts have entertained relief aimed directly at them. Doe v. University of Texas Health Science Center, 2021 WL 5882625 (S.D. Tex. 2021) (removal of a professionalism notation from the MSPE); Shervin v. Partners Healthcare System, 2 F. Supp. 3d 50 (D. Mass. 2014).

Ask for this in the complaint. Relief that is not pleaded is not ordered, and a settlement drafted without it leaves the school free to keep saying whatever it has been saying.

Declaratory relief, and the graduation problem

A declaratory judgment under 28 U.S.C. § 2201 can establish that the school breached its own rules even where no injunction is left to give. It has a catch worth knowing before you file: if you graduate, transfer, or otherwise move on and no damages claim survives, the equitable case can go moot. Marshall v. New York State Public High School Athletic Ass’n, 374 F. Supp. 3d 276 (W.D.N.Y. 2019). Mootness is one more reason these cases are filed early or not at all.

Fees, and why the shape of a settlement decides them

Fee-shifting exists in this area — 42 U.S.C. § 1988 for the constitutional claims, 29 U.S.C. § 794a(b) for Section 504, and 42 U.S.C. § 12205 for the ADA. Getting to it is technical. Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Department of Health & Human Resources, 532 U.S. 598 (2001), killed the catalyst theory: a school that caves the week before the hearing and gives you everything you asked for does not make you a prevailing party. You need judicial imprimatur — a merits judgment or a court-ordered consent decree. And the label alone will not carry it; a stipulation marked “So Ordered” without real judicial involvement has been held insufficient. Sampson v. Stony Brook University, 715 F. Supp. 3d 470 (E.D.N.Y. 2024).

This is a drafting problem, not a litigation problem, and it is decided in the last week of a case by whoever is paying attention.

Where FERPA does and does not help

FERPA gives you no lawsuit. Gonzaga University v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273 (2002), holds that it creates no individually enforceable right, so there is no claim under it and no route through Section 1983. The statutory mechanism is an administrative complaint to the Department of Education.

There is a second path. Where a school has written its records and privacy commitments into the handbook or the enrollment agreement, those promises can be enforced as contract terms even though FERPA itself cannot. Doe v. Trustees of Dartmouth College, 731 F. Supp. 3d 222 (D.N.H. 2024). The claim is the same conduct pleaded under a statute that actually has a remedy.

Emergency relief

Where a dismissal is days from taking effect, the tool is a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction holding the status quo. The standard is demanding: likelihood of success, irreparable harm, balance of equities, public interest. Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7 (2008).

Two practical points. It is enormously front-loaded — effectively the whole case compressed into days, with whatever record you have. And delay is fatal to it: a student who waits weeks has undercut the irreparable-harm argument by their own conduct. If timing is short, that changes the sequence of everything, which is why the first thing I ask about is dates.

What has to be in place before anything is filed

• The internal process, generally exhausted. Courts are unreceptive to a student who skipped the appeal the handbook provided.
• Deadlines. Limitations periods vary by claim and forum, and some claims carry short pre-suit notice requirements. A strong claim filed late is not a claim.
• Immunity and the right defendant. Public universities raise sovereign-immunity defenses that shape what relief is available and against whom. Naming the wrong defendant wastes months.
• A record that proves it. Not your account — documents. The policy in force at the time, the notice, the evidence file, the decision letter, the emails.
• Preservation. Records get purged and accounts deactivated after separation. Preserving your file, and where warranted putting the school on notice to preserve its own, is an early step.

Fees, costs, and time

Litigation is quoted case by case. Depending on the claim, the forum, the likely recovery, and whether the statute allows fee-shifting, the structure may be hourly, a hybrid of a reduced hourly rate plus a contingency, or — for the strongest cases — a contingency. Court costs are separate from attorney’s fees in every structure. Fees paid for earlier work on the same matter can be credited toward litigation where the written agreement says so. Full detail is on the fees and scope of services page.

A case that goes the distance takes a year or more, often considerably longer. Most resolve before that. Neither fact should be the reason you file or the reason you do not.

How to have this evaluated

Not a call about whether you have a case — nobody can answer that without the documents. The starting point is the Full Read + Game Plan: you send the entire record, I read all of it against the school’s own rules and the law, and then we sit down, with no time limit, and I tell you what is actually there — frequently including that the better route is not a courtroom.

Email zachary@astudentslawyer.com with a short summary, the dates, and any deadline, or call (561) 308-9119. If a deadline is close, say so first — it changes the order in which everything gets done.

Download the one-page overview (PDF) — what goes to court, how the Full Read + Game Plan works, and what is handled on campus.

Common questions

Can I sue my school for being treated unfairly?

Not by itself. A claim requires a specific broken duty — a constitutional protection at a public institution, a federal anti-discrimination statute, or a promise in the school’s own policies — plus a record proving it and a remedy a court can grant.

Do I have to finish the school’s appeal process first?

Generally yes, and skipping it damages the case. It matters for a second reason too: the record you build during the appeal becomes the evidentiary record of the lawsuit. An appeal written with litigation in mind is a materially different document from one written without.

Can I sue a private university?

Yes, on different theories. Private schools are not state actors, so constitutional due process generally does not apply. What reaches them is contract — the handbook and published policies — and the federal statutes that attach to federal funding: Section 504, the ADA, Title IX, and Title VI.

Is there an alternative to suing?

Often. A complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights costs nothing to file, produces no damages, and moves on its own schedule — but for certain accommodation and discrimination problems it creates pressure a lawsuit cannot, and faster. Choosing between the two, or sequencing them, is part of the analysis.

Will suing make things worse?

It can. It ends informal resolution, it is public unless the court permits otherwise, and it can affect how other institutions view an applicant. Those costs are real and belong in the decision. They are also not a reason to accept an unlawful outcome.

Can my parents pay for the litigation?

Yes. Third-party payment is common and permitted. You remain the client, your informed consent is required, and whoever pays neither directs the representation nor receives your confidential information without your say.

Will you talk about my case publicly?

No. Nothing about your matter goes on this website, in marketing, or anywhere else without your informed consent, and a case being a public court record does not change that.

Attorney advertising. This page is general information only — it is not legal advice and not an offer of representation. Descriptions of pending matters are general and identify no client or institution. Contacting me does not create an attorney–client relationship. Every case turns on its own facts, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Zachary Gaynor, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 125534, Boca Raton, Florida.