Tenured Law Professor Summarily Terminated at St. Thomas University College of Law

Some regular readers of TFL know that I occasionally represent law professors in employment-related disputes.  And if these cases are of potentially wider interest to the law professor community and my clients want their cases to be publicized, I have occasionally posted about those cases.  Well, I have a new law professor client, and I believe her case meets both criteria. 

Professor Lauren Gilbert has been a faculty member at St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law (in Miami, not to be confused with University of St. Thomas Law School in Minnesota) since 2002.  She received tenure and promotion to full professor in 2009.   After 22 years of employment, and 15 as a full tenured professor, on July 18, 2024 her career came to a jarring end when she became what I believe to be the first tenured law professor at an ABA-Accredited Law School to be treated as an at-will employee and summarily terminated.

On that day, STUCL Dean Tarlika Nuñez-Navarro served Professor Gilbert with a Notice of Termination.  The letter notified her that she was terminated, effective immediately. She was given one day to clear out her office and return University property and was escorted on and off campus by campus security.

STUCL, like all ABA law schools, is required to have an academic freedom and tenure policy (See ABA Standard 405(b)), and it did.  The policy with respect to the termination of tenured professors is set forth in the College of Law’s Faculty Handbook.  Professor Gilbert’s employment contract explicitly incorporated the terms of the Faculty Handbook, and the Faculty Handbook states that its terms are incorporated into each faculty member’s contract.   The provisions related to the termination of tenured faculty members are quite clear and unambiguous. 

There is a section in the Handbook entitled, “Tenure, Promotion and Reappointment.”   Under the subsection entitled “Full-Time Faculty” Paragraph I. Application, it states:  “These regulations shall govern all decisions on the promotion, tenure, retention and termination of members of the faculty of law of the University.” In the following paragraph, entitled “Contracts” it is stated: “These procedures shall be incorporated by reference into each faculty member’s contract.”

The Handbook contains a section, entitled “VII. Standards and Procedures for Termination of a Faculty Member for Cause.”  This section states, in pertinent part:

1. Tenured Faculty Members. Once tenure is acquired, a contract of continuing employment exists which may be terminated only for adequate cause.

In case of termination for cause of a continuous appointment, or where facts may be in dispute, the affected faculty member shall be informed in writing of any charges or facts and shall have the right to both the Informal and Formal procedures approved by the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the Association of American Law Schools (December 27, 1967), set forth in the Model Code of Procedure for Academic Freedom and Tenure 21 J.L. EDUCATION 222-34 (1968), and incorporated herein by reference.  Faculty members on continuous appointment who are dismissed for reasons not involving moral turpitude shall receive their salaries from the date of notification of dismissal, whether or not they are continued in their duties at the institution.

Citing these provisions, Professor Gilbert wrote to the University complaining that she had been wrongfully terminated and was entitled to these procedures.   She was referred to the University’s outside counsel.  At that point, she hired me.

I immediately wrote to the University’s counsel, demanding that her proposed termination be handled in accordance with her contract.

Shortly thereafter, the regular University counsel informed me that the matter would be handled by attorneys at a much larger law firm, akerman.  I contacted those attorneys and repeated my demands that Professor Gilbert be reinstated and afforded the due process guaranteed by her contract if the University was seeking to terminate her.  I repeatedly requested to be provided with any legal justification for denying Professor Gilbert her contractually guaranteed rights.   No justification was ever offered.  The University proposed an insultingly low settlement offer, which Professor Gilbert rejected.

Earlier this week, I filed a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment (Download Declaratory judgment with exhibits filed) in the Eleventh Circuit Court in Miami-Dade County.  The Complaint seeks only a declaration that the contractual rights set forth in the contract apply, and that the attempt to terminate Professor Gilbert by letter without any due process is null and void.   The University will have 20 days from service of process of the complaint to reply.  In the meantime, Professor Gilbert’s 2023-2024 contract expires today. STUCL faculty are on a 10-month contract from August 15 to June 14, which is payable over 12 months, ending August 14.    STUCL has refused to continue her salary as required by contract, pending the outcome of the due process to which she is entitled under the handbook. 

Readers may be wondering what horrible things Professor Gilbert must have done to warrant the University taking such extreme and obviously unlawful action.  According to the notice of termination, Professor Gilbert was fired for demonstrating “poor judgment and unprofessionalism,” and “disregard[ing] University policies.”   This included failure to attend one graduation ceremony, raising procedural objections at faculty meetings, asking former students to provide testimonials about her teaching, and sending an email to the college of law community critical of a hiring decision, and a minor incident involving a campus security guard in 2010.  According to the letter, because her “misconduct” was “nonacademic” she was not entitled to the due process guaranteed in the law school faculty handbook.  Rather, the university’s general employee handbook, which authorizes the University to “terminate an employee, without warning, for any reason or no reason, even if the actions constitutes a first offense” "controls."  In other words, the law school Dean was asserting the right to treat a full tenured professor as an at-will employee.  It should be noted that the only unit at the University that offers tenure is the law school.

So what is really motivating this wrongful termination? According to Professor Gilbert:

The short answer is that I stood up to the Dean of the Law School and the President of the University. I refused to go along with their discriminatory actions. I refused to accept their blatant violations of academic freedom. I refused to be cowed by their efforts to silence me. Even worse, I reported their multiple egregious violations of accreditation standards to their accrediting agency, the American Bar Association (ABA).

My story is part of a larger story, the story of a rogue law school and University administration that has sought to purge all professors deemed insufficiently loyal to the administration, especially those faculty members deemed to be troublemakers because they wouldn't readily toe the party line and had a tendency to stand up for their rights and the rights of others and an annoying habit of reminding the administration of its obligations under applicable law and standards.

This story began in March 2022, when the faculty unanimously adopted a resolution criticizing St. Thomas University President Armstrong for discriminating against the LAMBDA Law Society, a student organization advocating for the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals. Since then, the administration has used every means at their disposal, both legal and illegal, to remove those faculty members considered undesirable. Over a dozen tenured and long-term contract faculty members, well over half-the senior faculty, have resigned, retired or accepted buy-outs in the last two years. One committed suicide. I was one of the last holdouts who refused to succumb to their pressure campaign to voluntarily resign, so they built a phony case against me for termination.

When they realized that terminating me through the processes required in my contract would likely fail, they decided to just ignore my clearly delineated due process rights and summarily terminate me.

 

Professor Gilbert reached out to The American Association of University Professors for assistance. The AAUP’s senior program officer in the Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure and Governance wrote to Dean Nunez Navarro (Download AAUP Letter to Dean Navarro 8-1-24) stating: “the administration’s action to dismiss Professor Gilbert without having first demonstrated adequacy of cause in a faculty hearing is fundamentally at odds with basic standards of academic due process.” AAUP urged the Dean to “rescind the notice of dismissal” and comply with these standards. As noted in AAUP's follow-up letter (Download AAUP Letter to Dean Navarro 8-13-24), the University simply ignored the letter. 

Based on complaints submitted by a group of STUCL faculty members including Professor Gilbert, both the ABA and the AALS are actively investigating various violations of standards, regulations and policies by the law school.  A joint visit from the ABA and AALS is scheduled for September.

I invite readers to express your views about this matter in the comments.  I am particularly interested to hear if any readers are familiar with any similar situations where a law school or University has summarily terminated a tenured faculty member without offering them any due process.  I also welcome any advice or feedback on the Complaint for Declaratory Judgment and other thoughts on appropriate legal steps that might be taken.  If anyone were interested in submitting an amicus brief to the Court in support of Professor Gilbert, that would also be most welcomed.  If you prefer to contact me off-line, you can email me directly at [email protected]

For those who might wish to help Professor Gilbert more directly, she has set up a Gofundme page, and there is a petition to reinstate her. 

Stay tuned for further developments.

UPDATE:  Thanks to over 100 generous donations, Professor Gilbert smashed the fundraising goal for her legal defense fund.  But you can still contribute if you wish. 

Comments

[Ediberto Roman]

While I do not know Professor Gilbert personally—we may have overlapped for a brief period while I was a tenured professor at St.Thomas—-I know of her work in the immigration field. She is nothing short of a brilliant scholar that appears to be dedicated to her students and the community. She is a star among the nation’s top immigration scholars and practitioners. Indeed, She is arguably St. Thomas’ best known professor and scholar.

The account above is not only extremely disturbing, it raises questions of abuses of process, and strikes me as a case, if the allegations are true, as one where the defendants are in deep trouble. The purported reasons mentioned above for her dismissal appear to be inconsistent with both American Bar Association Standards and STU’s own governing documents. For instance, one purported reason for dismissal mentioned above: missing graduation ceremonies? If legal academics were held to that standard, there wouldn’t be an academy, I include myself in that group of professors that miss such events. The other alleged basis m mentioned above for termination, raising issues concerning a hiring decision and other matters at faculty meetings, appear squarely within the purview of a faculty member’s authority, and indeed, I would argue it is within a faculty member’s obligation to raise such matters affecting a law school. Another purported reason mentioned above, an alleged event occurring over a decade ago, reeks of a pretext. As an immigration scholar of some stature, former professor at St. Thomas, and someone that respects Professor Gilbert as well as notions of due and fair process, I certainly hope, and indeed expect, our judicial system will address this matter.

I call on other colleagues here to express their views on this matter.

[anon]

What was the "real" reason?

[Anon]

The corporatization of the academy will be nearly complete when they allow themselves unilateral authority to fire anyone deemed insufficiently supportive of administration policies. Be very afraid.

[David Frakt]

Thank you, Professor Roman. From what I have seen so far, the University does not have a strong case. Certainly, I think they would have difficulty convincing a panel of tenured faculty members that she should be dismissed. I think that is part of the University's reluctance to give her the due process required by her contract.

[James Fischer]

Perhaps the school just wants Professor Gilbert off-campus during the site visit? I am not that familiar with the mechanics of site visits so I cannot comment on how effective such a strategy would be but it would explain the decision to engage in a termination of dubious legality and one that will likely get overturned, down the road. On the other hand, it is Florida, so who knows if litigation will be successful?

[David Yamada]

This is enormously disturbing, and I have to wonder if the University is getting advice from some outside individuals or organizations that want to break tenure.

If St. Thomas gets away with this, then it's awful not only for Prof. Gilbert, but also for tenured and contract faculty everywhere. In today's academic climate, we all have to be wary of extreme, seemingly outlandish tactics that, if successful, signal open season on their intended targets.

David Yamada
Suffolk University Law School, Boston

[Mark T.]

Is mediation an option to resolve this?

[David Frakt]

I don't want to speculate on why St. Thomas has chosen to breach a very clear contractual provision. We are simply asking for the law school to follow the process in the law school faculty handbook. This process does not mention mediation. However, we have indicated that we would welcome the presence of a mediator to facilitate the discussion at the "informal" conference between the President and Professor Gilbert which the handbook outlines as the first step in the process to terminate a tenured faculty member.

[David Frakt]

Some of Professor Gilbert's students have started a petition urging her reinstatement. More signatures and comments would be welcome. https://www.change.org/p/urge-st-thomas-university-to-reinstate-tenured-professor-lauren-gilbert