Gonzaga University Student Defense Lawyer
Gonzaga students call me after a letter from the Resolution Center about the Student Code of Conduct, after an academic integrity referral, or — most often, and most urgently — after a graduate or professional program raises academic standing or professionalism. Gonzaga is a private Catholic, Jesuit university in Spokane with a law school, a School of Health Sciences, and a nursing program that carries licensure consequences no undergraduate conduct case does. Because Gonzaga is private, the legal frame is different from the one that applies at the University of Washington or Washington State, and using the wrong frame in an appeal wastes the appeal.
Overview
Gonzaga is a private institution, so there is no constitutional due process claim available against it. The relationship is contractual, and the contract is the paper the university publishes: the Student Code of Conduct, the academic integrity policy, the academic catalog, and the handbook of whatever school or program you are enrolled in. The question in a Gonzaga case is almost never whether the outcome was fair in the abstract. It is whether the university kept the promises it made in writing — the notice it said it would give, the review it said it would provide, the sequence it said it would follow, the standard it said it would apply. That theory is developed on the breach of contract against universities page. Two federal decisions still matter here even though they arose at public institutions, because they describe how seriously any reviewer treats a school’s 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). Federal statutes apply regardless of public or private status — Title IX, Section 504 and the ADA, and FERPA all reach Gonzaga.
Where Gonzaga cases come from
The recurring undergraduate sources are academic integrity referrals from large and online sections driven by similarity and AI-detection software; alcohol and residence-life matters; and student-organization conduct. The graduate and professional side is where the stakes change. Gonzaga’s School of Law puts every conduct finding on a collision course with bar character-and-fitness review years later. Its School of Health Sciences includes the School of Nursing and Human Physiology, with undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral nursing programs and a nurse anesthesia program run with Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, where a professionalism or clinical-performance finding is read later by clinical sites and licensing boards. Gonzaga also hosts the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Spokane program through a health partnership, and medical students there should be clear about which institution’s policy governs before responding to anything. See law school dismissal and academic standing, nursing school dismissal, and professionalism and fitness concerns.
Which process you are in matters
Gonzaga routes conduct allegations, academic integrity referrals, sexual-misconduct complaints, and academic-standing decisions through different offices with different rules, and the professional schools operate their own processes on top. The route fixes the deadline, the decision-maker, the standard, and whether an advisor may attend or speak. A decision that is disciplinary in substance but carries an academic label deserves to be challenged on that ground alone, because deference of the kind described in Horowitz and Ewing attaches to academic evaluation rather than to findings about misconduct. Identify your track first: student conduct, academic misconduct, Title IX, or academic dismissal.
What to do first
Pull the current Student Code of Conduct and academic integrity policy from Gonzaga’s own site rather than relying on any summary, including this one, and pull your program handbook and catalog year as well — at a private university those are the contract, and the version that applied to your cohort is the one that matters. Calendar the deadline, request your file and the material the university relied on, and preserve your drafting history, messages, and notes before they are overwritten. Do not sit for an interview until you understand what the university claims to have. A separate charge for dishonesty during the process is common, and it tends to be easier to prove than the original allegation.
What I can help with
- Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
- Helping you prepare your account, your documents, and your questions
- Testing whether Gonzaga University followed its own published procedures
- Scrutinizing software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
- Assisting with the written response and appeal, to the extent the policy permits
- Serving as your advisor where the process allows it
- Negotiating sanction terms, notations, and disclosure language
What a lawyer may actually do in your case depends on that school’s policy. Some tracks allow counsel to participate, some allow a non-participating advisor, and some allow no outside person at all. Reading the current policy is the first step, and it determines what form the assistance can take.
Common questions
Gonzaga is private. Do I have any rights at all?
Yes, but they come from different places. You do not have a constitutional due process claim, and arguing one signals that nobody read the right documents. What you do have is a set of written institutional promises that the university is expected to keep, plus federal statutory protections that do not depend on public or private status. In practice the contract theory is often stronger than students expect, because handbooks are drafted in detail and then not followed in detail.
I am a Gonzaga law student. How much does this matter?
More than the campus sanction suggests. Bar character-and-fitness applications ask about academic and disciplinary history, and the answer is compared against what the law school reports. A minor finding handled carelessly in year one becomes a disclosure and explanation problem at admission, which is why the first notice should be treated as the whole case rather than a preliminary step.
Does the university’s Jesuit mission language change the analysis?
It changes the framing, not the method. Mission-based standards are broad, which cuts both ways: broad standards give an institution room to charge conduct that a narrow rule would not reach, and they also commit the institution to values — fairness, care for the individual person, honest process — that a written response can hold it to. Either way the operative document is still the published policy, read closely.
Other Washington schools: Washington State University, Eastern Washington University, Whitman College, and Seattle University. The full list is on the Washington student defense page, and the flat-fee record review is described on the fees and scope of services page.
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.
This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.
Attorney advertising. Zachary Gaynor is admitted in Florida and its federal courts, not in Washington; Washington matters are handled through the framework described on the nationwide practice page — federal-law assessment, campus-process support where the school’s policy permits an advisor, and association with local counsel or pro hac vice admission where required.