- A Massachusetts student’s parents recently sued the Hingham School Committee and several Hingham High School administrators after their son was disciplined for using AI on a history project. The parents allege that the school district damaged their son’s academic record, class rank, grade point average, and induction into the National Honor Society, affecting his chances of admission into elite colleges. The district did not have a policy on AI use at the time and the assignment did not include any instructions advising that students were barred from using artificial intelligence. The student claims he used AI to research and write an initial outline for the project, but used citations in his work. The parents’ lawsuit argues that the punishment was unfair and arbitrary. The suit aims to compel the school officials to correct the student’s academic record by changing his grade and removing any mention of academic integrity infractions.
- A Native American former professor at the University of North Carolina (UNC) recently sued UNC. The professor claims that he was frequently passed over for promotions in favor of less-qualified white applicants and regularly pushed into positions based on his ethnicity. The professor claims his contract was not renewed because of his long-standing history of challenging UNC’s lack of diversity and its prior discriminatory conduct towards him. This past year, UNC began recording his lectures without his knowledge or consent, which the professor alleges violated UNC’s policies and only occurred after he criticized UNC’s handling of diversity issues. The recordings allegedly occurred as part of an internal investigation into the professor’s classroom conduct. The lawsuit alleges that the professor’s pay also stagnated the more he spoke to the press.
- A group of current and former female athletes from five Mountain West Conference universities, and the suspended associate head coach of the San Jose State University (SJSU) women’s volleyball team have filed suit against the Mountain West Conference alleging that the Conference and others discriminated against female athletes by allowing a transgender athlete to compete on SJSU’s roster. The complaint alleges that allowing the transgender student-athlete to compete on the SJSU women’s volleyball team is a violation of Title IX and the parties are seeking a preliminary and permanent injunction. The complaint states that the transgender student-athlete is only allowed to compete because the conference and SJSU chose to implement NCAA’s Transgender Eligibility Policies, which are currently being challenged in a proposed class action suit for violating Title IX. The suit also alleges that student-athletes have been prohibited from exercising their First Amendment rights because they have been threatened and discouraged from speaking out against the transgender athlete’s participation and from boycotting matches against SJSU.
A number of affirmative action cases have been working their way through the courts since the . The Supreme Court is currently considering whether to hear a case involving a temporary K-12 admission policy meant to diversify student bodies at three Boston schools. Earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed in Illinois about a scholarship program meant to diversify the education workforce and narrow the achievement gap. The individual named in that lawsuit is a nonminority high school senior who plans to pursue an education degree and is qualified for the scholarship program except for her race. A few months ago, a federal judge in Virginia dismissed a proposed class action lawsuit accusing a newspaper publisher of adopting diversity policies that allegedly led to five journalists’ terminations or other adverse employment actions. In that case, the journalists sued under Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race discrimination in making and enforcing contracts.
