An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 15 – Student Discipline

violations. Schools should, however, make sure to apply its different policies uniformly and consistently. The appearance of arbitrariness, such as if a school decides to bypass or release one student – but not another student – from a certain step in the process, can subject the school to claims that it is handling discipline in a discriminatory manner.

Schools should clearly communicate the process for handling expulsions, dismissals and withdrawals to students and families. Typically, the discipline process is included in a student handbook. Remember that once a process is developed, implemented and communicated to the students/families, it becomes incorporated into the contractual relationship and the school must adhere to the process. A failure to do so may lead to liability for the School under a breach of contract theory.

LCW Practice Advisor

The contents of an enrollment agreement, a student handbook and school policies all will collectively define the contractual relationship between a school and student/family. As such, if a school provides certain disciplinary procedures, such as in its student handbook, the school must adhere to those procedures. The failure to do so could create liability for the school under a breach of contract theory. Raiser v. Ventura College of Law 2135

Raiser was a former law student at Ventura College of Law. Upon discovering that Raiser may have lied on his application, the College dismissed Raiser. Raiser requested a hearing, which was guaranteed in the College’s policy manual. The College denied his request for a hearing, arguing that because he may have lied on his application, he did not have the right to hearing. Raiser sued the College for breach of contract. The district court dismissed Raiser’s lawsuit and Raiser appealed. The Ninth Circuit ultimately reversed the district court’s dismissal and held that the possibility that Raiser might have lied on his application did not negate his right to a hearing. McCarty v. Yale University 2136 A student was accused of plagiarism and eventually expelled. The student claimed that the University breached its contract by failing to follow its own stated process for disciplinary actions, which involved informing the student in advance of the procedures for a disciplinary investigation and who would serve on the University’s disciplinary committee, so as to give the student the opportunity to object to any members. The University was not able to offer evidence that it had complied with its own stated process, but argued that it their failure to follow their own stated process was irrelevant because it would have not changed the membership of the committee even if the student had objected, and also because the court must defer to the University’s educational decisions. While courts do generally show great deference to the academic decisions of educational institutions, here, the conflict arose because of a breach of a

An Administrator’s Guide to California Private School Law ©2019 Liebert Cassidy Whitmore 515