A series of lawsuits by college students who sought refunds for tuition and other fees due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns have been met with mixed results three years later.
The lawsuits, which have been filed all over the country, allege that the universities did not contractually fulfill their obligations to students when they switched to remote instruction because of the pandemic lockdowns and students are therefore entitled to the return of some of their tuition and room and board fees.
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But the cases have had a mixed track record since they were initially filed, even as many schools have elected to pay settlements to students to resolve the cases outside of court.
Kristen Cardoso, an attorney at the Florida-based law firm Kopelowitz Ostrow Ferguson Weiselberg Gilbert, which has represented students in several cases, told the Washington Examiner in an interview that courts have been finding for both students and universities, creating a muddled legal landscape on the issue.
"The decisions are going all over the place," she said, noting that a case brought by her firm against the public University of Central Florida had gone in favor of the school, while another case against the private Barry University in Miami had led to a settlement.
Cardoso said that contributing to the mixed results of the cases has been the issue of sovereign immunity, which public universities have invoked to dismiss the cases. Meanwhile, some states have moved to pass legislation in a bid to protect schools from claims of breach of contract.
The messy crop of case law, she said, could require the Supreme Court to step in.
"It could be something that could eventually, I think, be an appellate issue for the Supreme Court if states are trying to impose these restrictions against litigants — in this case, students — from enforcing contracts that they make with a university," she said.
Karen Harned, president of Harned Strategies and a business law attorney, told the Washington Examiner in an interview that students "had a good argument" to claim that the services they had agreed to pay for were not provided.
"Online universities are not a new thing," Harned, who is not involved in the college lawsuits, said. "These kids didn't go to those universities for a reason, and so I do think that they can legitimately argue that they didn't receive the full benefit of the tuition and room and board that they thought they would receive. They're not getting the college experience at all."
Nate Fink, a partner at the Michigan-based law firm Fink Bressack, said he thinks the tide has turned in favor of students as more rulings from appeals courts come out.
"Early on across the country, it seemed like the trend was most or many judges were ruling against the students and in favor of universities," Fink told the Washington Examiner in an interview. "We think that the trend has sort of swung back the other way as these cases have moved up into the appellate court."
The firm argued a case last week before the Michigan Supreme Court that seeks to compel state universities to pay out refunds to students who attended school during the lockdowns.
"We think that it went well," Fink said of the recent oral argument. "Fundamentally, we think that our message that students shouldn't have to pay for what they didn't receive is something that hopefully the justices agree with."
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The Michigan-based attorney noted that universities received a significant amount of relief money from the federal government during the pandemic through the CARES Act, which was passed in the spring of 2020, but that those funds were not extended to students, even as universities continued charging their typical tuition rates.
"We think that's very relevant," he said. "We don't take issue with the fact that they got those funds, but the fact that they didn't pass along some of that money to struggling college students and instead use it for other purposes, we don't think it's fair."