Texas Student Defense — Federal Claims & Campus Proceedings

Overview

Texas educates more students than almost any state in the country, and its student disputes run on the same two tracks as everywhere else: the school’s own written policies, and federal law — FERPA, Title IX, Section 504 and the ADA, and, at public institutions, constitutional due process. The Fifth Circuit’s framework for campus discipline is illustrated by Plummer v. University of Houston, 860 F.3d 767 (5th Cir. 2017), where the court measured a public university’s disciplinary process against federal due-process requirements — a reminder that the questions courts ask (notice, opportunity to respond, fidelity to the school’s own rules) are the questions to build your record around from day one.

The most important distinction is whether your school is public or private. At a public institution the Fourteenth Amendment applies and the argument sounds in due process. At a private institution the relationship is contractual, and the handbook and catalog are the contract. Both routes start in the same place — the written policy and what the school actually did. The public-side tools are described at due process at public institutions; the private-side theory at breach of contract against universities.

My work for Texas students is federal-law assessment, behind-the-scenes support in campus proceedings where the school’s policy permits an advisor, and association with Texas local counsel or pro hac vice admission where a courtroom is the right move — the structure explained on the nationwide practice page.

Texas schools covered

Each page below explains how discipline, dismissal, and appeals typically work at that institution, where its cases tend to come from, and what a lawyer can and cannot do inside that particular process. Coverage spans the state’s major public universities, its largest private universities, its medical and osteopathic schools, and its law schools.

Public universities

• University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) — Austin
• Texas A&M University (TAMU) — College Station
• University of Houston (UH) — Houston
• Texas Tech University (TTU) — Lubbock
• University of North Texas (UNT) — Denton
• Texas State University (TXST) — San Marcos
• University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) — San Antonio
• University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) — Richardson
• University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) — Arlington
• University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) — El Paso
• Texas Southern University (TSU) — Houston
• Sam Houston State University (SHSU) — Huntsville

Private universities

• Rice University — Houston
• Baylor University — Waco
• Southern Methodist University (SMU) — Dallas
• Texas Christian University (TCU) — Fort Worth
• University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) — San Antonio
• St. Mary’s University — San Antonio

Medical and health-professions programs

Dismissal, remediation, and professionalism matters in these programs follow the framework on my medical school dismissal and remediation page; board-exam accommodations run through national programs covered on the USMLE and COMLEX page. On the osteopathic side, Texas is one of the largest DO states in the country. Texas’s enormous nursing pipeline generates the clinical-failure patterns covered on the nursing school dismissal page. Where a medical school sits inside a university listed above, its coverage lives on that university’s page.

• Baylor College of Medicine — Houston
• UT Southwestern Medical Center — Dallas
• University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) — Galveston
• UTHealth Houston (McGovern Medical School) — Houston
• Long School of Medicine at UT San Antonio — San Antonio
• Dell Medical School at UT Austin — Austin
• Texas A&M School of Medicine — Bryan-College Station
• Fertitta Family College of Medicine at the University of Houston — Houston
• Burnett School of Medicine at TCU — Fort Worth
• Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) — Lubbock
• TTUHSC El Paso (Foster School of Medicine) — El Paso
• UT Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine — Edinburg
• UT Tyler School of Medicine — Tyler
• UNT Health Science Center (Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine) — Fort Worth
• Sam Houston State University College of Osteopathic Medicine — Conroe
• University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine — San Antonio

Law schools

Character-and-fitness exposure makes early handling of law school conduct and academic matters essential; the framework is on the law school dismissal and academic standing page. Where a law school belongs to a university listed above, its coverage lives on that university’s page.

• University of Texas School of Law — Austin
• Texas A&M University School of Law — Fort Worth
• University of Houston Law Center — Houston
• SMU Dedman School of Law — Dallas
• Baylor Law School — Waco
• Texas Tech University School of Law — Lubbock
• South Texas College of Law Houston — Houston
• St. Mary’s University School of Law — San Antonio
• Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University — Houston
• UNT Dallas College of Law — Dallas

If a Texas institution is not listed, that does not mean the matter cannot be handled. It means a dedicated page has not been written yet. The analysis in a discipline or dismissal case depends far more on the governing policy and the facts than on the name of the school.

Accreditation as leverage

Texas institutions answer to SACSCOC as their institutional accreditor, and their professional programs answer to the LCME (MD), COCA (DO), the ABA (law), and CCNE or ACEN (nursing). Every one of those accreditors expects published, fair, and consistently applied academic and appeal procedures. When a program departs from its own written process, that is both a contract problem and a problem measured against the standards the program is held to — and saying so precisely, at the right stage, changes who reads the appeal.

Do not assume the school is improvising

Texas’s major universities are experienced litigants with standing counsel, and by the time a committee convenes the institution may already be building its record. Yours should be underway too — the policies for your cohort, every notice and email, the comparator questions. The place to start is a flat-fee record review; the reasons to start early are set out in Do Not Underestimate Your School.

Attorney advertising. Zachary Gaynor is admitted in Florida, the U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts of Florida, and the Eleventh Circuit — not in Texas. Texas matters are handled as described on the nationwide practice page: federal-law assessment, campus-process support where school policy permits, and association with local counsel or pro hac vice admission where required, consistent with the applicable multijurisdictional-practice rules. Institution names identify where a matter arises; no affiliation or endorsement is implied. This is general information, not legal advice.