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Suit Restored Over Expulsion by UCLA of Ph.D. Candidate
Court of Appeal Says Allegations of Due-Process Violations Are Adequate to Survive Demurrer
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Court of Appeal for this district has ordered reinstatement of two causes of action against the Regents of the University of California by a woman who says she was disqualified as a doctoral candidate at UCLA because she did not complete her studies within the time set by the department while no other student had been expelled on that ground.
Termination of her status as a candidate came after she had spent 11 years in quest of her degree and turned in a dissertation that was deemed inadequate.
Authoring the opinion was Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark E. Windham, sitting on assignment to Div. Two. The opinion, filed Monday, was not certified for publication.
It reverses a Sept. 15, 2020 judgment of dismissal which followed the sustaining of demurrers without leave to amend by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Barbara Ann Meiers on July 15, 2020.
Affirmance, Reversal
Windham said Meiers correctly sustained demurrers to Rana Sharif’s causes of action based on discrimination and breach of contract, but erred in tossing her claim based on a violation of due process and a linked cause of action seeking declaratory relief.
Sharif, who is now a lecturer in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at California State University, Northridge, began pursuing a Ph.D. in gender studies at UCLA in 2006. She advanced to a doctoral candidacy in 2012, was given a one-year deadline in September 2016 to complete her dissertation, and submitted a dissertation in August 2017.
On Sept. 11, 2017, the department recommended ending Sharif’s eligibility for a Ph.D. because status as a doctoral student because the dissertation she submitted was shoddy and she had been working on her degree for 11 years while the “normative” period was six years.
The recommendation was accepted and an appeal failed. The right of appeal did not include a hearing.
Due-Process Violation
Windham wrote that the causes of action for discrimination fell because Sharif had not exhausted her administrative remedy and contract-based causes of action challenging a university’s administrative decisions are not judicially recognized. But, he said, the due-process claim does survive a challenge by demurrer, explaining:
“[A] fair reading of her operative pleading is that her procedural due process rights were violated because the department did not give her notice it was dissatisfied with her performance and of the consequences of failing to meet her dissertation deadline.”
Although the regents argued that she did have the requisite notice when she was given until Sept. 15, 2017 to submit an acceptable dissertation, Windham said this merely creates a factual dispute, and the facts, as stated in the complaint, must be accepted as true on a demurrer.
He added that “evidence that a student was treated differently from others in a like situation may be relevant to show the university acted arbitrarily or in bad faith.”
The jurist declared:
“Based on these allegations, Sharif may proceed on her due process cause of action, as well as her cause of action for declaratory relief insofar as it is dependent on and relates to the alleged due process violations. In so finding, we recognize that courts will rarely intervene in a university’s academic affairs, particularly in actions challenging a university’s academic decisions regarding a student’s qualification for a degree….Still, cases upholding such refusals to intervene are generally reviewing summary judgment motions, after the development of evidence.” He continued: “Our review is after the sustaining of a demurrer. Given this procedural posture, we cannot find at this stage of the proceedings, when we must view the allegations of the complaint as true, that Sharif has not stated facts sufficient to constitute the cause of action.”
Exhausting Judicial Remedies
The regents argued that the cause of action alleging a due-process violation was barred by virtue of Sharif’s failure to exhaust judicial remedies by seeking a writ. Windham observed that because no right to a hearing existed, administrative mandamus was unavailable, and any writ action would have been in ordinary mandate under Code of Civil Procedure §1085. He wrote:
“Although we agree that Sharif could have sought a writ under section 1085, the Regents have not cited authority holding that it was her only avenue of relief. Rather, the cases the Regents cite involved grievance processes in which hearings were held or were offered….Other cases the Regents cite did not expressly hold that a writ under section 1085 is the exclusive avenue of relief….
“In the absence of clear authority holding that Sharif had to exhaust her judicial remedies by first seeking a writ of mandate under section 1085 before filing this action, we conclude that she may pursue her due process and declaratory relief causes of action.”
The case is Sharif v. The Regents of the University of California, B308941.
Sharif was represented by Philip E. Cook and Brian J. Wright of The Cook Law Firm in downtown Los Angeles and by Jill Thompson and Mallory Sepler-King of Public Counsel. Stephen M. Harber and Amy Arseneaux Evenstad of the downtown Los Angeles firm of McCune & Harber acted for the regents.
Mitigating Circumstaces
Windham related the circumstances, set forth by Sharif, in explaining the length of time it took her working toward her Ph.D, writing:
“[S]he identified personal circumstances that contributed to her prolonged time to degree: her marital status, in that her 2006 marriage to a Jordanian citizen involved a longer than anticipated immigration process; her husband’s underemployment required Sharif to take additional teaching jobs; her two pregnancies, during which UCLA did not tell her about benefits to which she was entitled; caring for her children, one of whom was disabled; caring for her mother who was on disability; having to adjust her project apparently because conflict in the Israeli/Palestinian region affected her ability to do fieldwork for her dissertation; and her personal disability for which she was treated in fall and summer 2017.”
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