Misrepresentations About Expunged Drug-Related Offenses on Student’s Law School Admission Application Supported the Rescinding of the Student’s Admission After Completion of Three Semesters

The Court of Appeals, in a full-fledged opinion by Judge Abdus-Salaam, over a dissent, determined a law school did not act arbitrarily and capriciously when it determined a student had made misrepresentations about (expunged) criminal offenses in his admission-application and rescinded his admission after three semesters of study:

Courts have a “restricted role” in reviewing determinations of colleges and universities … . A determination will not be disturbed unless a school acts arbitrarily and not in the exercise of its honest discretion, it fails to abide by its own rules … or imposes a penalty so excessive that it shocks one’s sense of fairness … . None of those factors is present here.

The law school’s treatment of [the student] was rational insofar as it was not wholly inconsistent with the school’s approach to rescission of admission in general. The law school states that while it routinely receives, and often grants, requests from enrolled students to amend the criminal history sections of their applications, such amendments usually involve minor offenses such as open container or traffic violations, or small quantity marijuana possession. Amendments are by no means guaranteed – -the law school states that on at least two occasions, when the information contained in the subsequent disclosure would have prevented the individual from being considered for admission, the students’ admission was rescinded.

The law school avers that it has an unwritten policy of not admitting people who sell drugs and that if [the student] had disclosed on his application that his arrest was for the distribution of LSD to an undercover officer and possession with intent to distribute, his application would have been denied during the initial screening process. The school explains that it generally distinguishes between applicants with a history of personal drug use, and those with a history of drug dealing – – the former can be accepted under certain circumstances, but the latter are not. Matter of Powers v St. John’s Univ. Sch. of Law, 2015 NY Slip Op 02799, CtApp 4-2-15