A group of Loyola University Chicago students will have another chance to sue their school for refusing to refund at least a portion of the tuition they paid for the Spring 2020 semester, when the university shut down its campus and forced all students into online classes, in response to Covid-19.
On July 25, a split panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling of U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman, who had dismissed the lawsuit last year.
In the 2-1 ruling, the majority said Gettleman was wrong to shut down the students’ attempt to press their claims that Loyola’s Covid campus shutdown, and refusal to refund tuition and fees, amounted to a breach of Loyola’s contract with its students.
Ellen Noteware
| Berger Montague
Circuit Judge Amy J. St. Eve dissented.
“Here, the students allege that, in exchange for tuition and fees, Loyola promised in-person instruction and access to on-campus facilities and services. The students point to Loyola’s catalogs, registration portal, pre-pandemic practice, and different charges for Loyola’s online versus on-campus programs as sources for the contract, whether express or implied,” Judge Jackson-Akiwumi wrote.
“Contrary to the students’ position, these sources do not constitute an express contract for Loyola to provide in-person educational services. But we agree with the students that, taken as a whole, these sources are sufficient to show an implied contract to provide in-person instruction and access to Loyola’s campus in exchange for tuition and certain mandatory fees.”
The appellate decision comes amid a series of split opinions on the question throughout America’s federal courts. In Illinois alone, for instance, different federal judges reached different conclusions on whether students have valid legal claims to press in court against the schools that moved their instruction exclusively online amid the pandemic, while refusing to offer them any financial refunds or other concessions.
In the case against Loyola, a group of students and parents of students sued the university in 2020. All of the plaintiffs asserted they paid Loyola between $14,000 and $23,000 in tuition and fees to attend in-person instruction and participate in campus life at Loyola’s campus on Chicago’s North Side during the 2020 spring semester.
However, after Gov. JB Pritzker ordered the schools to shut down, the university complied, closing the campus, ordering all students to leave, and then moving all instruction exclusively online.
But in doing so, the university refused to refund any portion of the tuition or fees, including fees the students paid for access to facilities and activities the school closed in response to Covid.
Further, the complaint noted the stark differences in rates charged to students taking classes in person, and those participating in Loyola’s online programs. Traditional on-campus students were charged $1,050-$1,838 per credit hour, or about $22,000 per semester. Online students, however, were charged $693 per credit hour, and also were not charged hundreds of dollars more per semester in fees.
They claimed the school’s refusal to refund the fees or find ways to deliver instruction on campus, in person, amounted to a violation of the students’ contract with the university.
Named plaintiffs in the action included students Isabel Bottello, of Itasca; Kari Whalen, of Morris; and Simon Pfeiffer, of Cocoa Beach, Florida. Parent plaintiffs included Andreea Gociman, also of Cocoa Beach, and Joseph Hickey, of Orland Park.
The plaintiffs have asked the court to order Loyola to refund the campus activity-related fees, and to refund students the difference between the tuition rates charged for on-campus instruction, and the rates charged for exclusively online classes.
They said the online instruction was worth considerably less than what they were charged, and was “not that for which (the students and parents) registered, bargained, and paid.”
In response, Loyola argued the students were impermissibly attempting to ask the courts to decide whether Loyola had made the correct decision in shutting down in-person classes and closing the campus to address a public health threat.
Further, the school argued they never had signed any kind of contract with the students guaranteeing them in-person instruction and access to campus in return for their tuition and fees.
In district court in 2021, Judge Gettleman agreed, dismissing their case. He said the students were merely attempting to challenge the “quality of the instruction,” and “not whether Loyola provided education ‘at all.’”
On appeal, however, judges said the questions at this point in the proceedings favor the students’ position.
Jackson-Akiwumi said the students’ claims weren’t about the quality of the education, or about whether Loyola had made the right call amid the onset of the pandemic.
“While the students pled that they were ‘dissatisfied’ with the educational services they received during the pandemic and that the online program was ‘worth less’ than an in-person educational experience, we do not read this as an attack on the quality of the remote education the students received,” Jackson-Akiwumi wrote.
“Instead, these allegations speak to the existence of a purported implied contract and the nature of the students’ damages from the university’s alleged breach of contract. Here, the students do more than allege that the remote education was not good enough. Rather, the students point to an identifiable contractual promise that the university failed to honor - the promise to provide in-person classes and access to on-campus facilities and resources.”
In dissent, Judge St. Eve said Gettleman had the question correct.
She said the majority’s decision defies precedent on the question of colleges’ legal contractual obligations to students. St. Eve warned the ruling would expand Illinois law to extend so-called “’fundamental promise’ implied contracts” in post secondary education “beyond the realm of matriculation and graduation” to now include the way in which instruction is delivered.
She warned this could open the gates to a host of new lawsuits against private colleges and universities in Illinois.
“It is not difficult to imagine multitudes of campus conditions and experiences, supported by historical practice, to which future litigants might seek to apply the majority’s approach,” St. Eve wrote.
She said such questions should be better left to Illinois state courts to sort out, not federal judges.
The appellate panel reversed Gettleman’s decision to dismiss, and sent the case back to federal district court for further proceedings.
Plaintiffs have been represented by attorneys Ellen T. Noteware, of Berger Montague PC, of Philadelphia, and Elizabeth A. Fegan, of Fegan Scott LLC, of Chicago.
Loyola has been represented by attorney Kristen A. Milton, of Jackson Lewis, of Chicago.