Brief Before MA Appeals Court on School Expulsion

The Houston Institute joined the Center for Law and Education to file a 50-page amicus curiae brief in a school expulsion case before the MA Court of Appeals. The brief responded to the appellate court’s specific question regarding “judicial abstention from scholastic disciplinary disputes.” We argue that the deference courts have accorded school officials in discipline cases is not without limit; that, in this case, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying deference to the school district’s decision to expel the student because: (1) the district lacked an adequate evidentiary basis to support its decision (including that the district incorrectly drew a negative inference from the student’s silence) and (2) the district’s discipline procedures failed to comply with procedural due process and the district’s own policy handbook.

Read our brief: