A short excerpt from today's long decision by Judge Trevor McFadden (D.D.C.) in Newman v. Howard Univ. School of Law (for more, read the whole thing):
Howard University School of Law expelled Michael Newman. It claims that it did so because he repeatedly sent disruptive emails to his classmates against school policy. Newman tells a different story. He claims that his expulsion was the culmination of two years of racist vitriol and abuse that he suffered at the hands of Howard students and administrators….
[T]he Court dismisses most of Newman's antidiscrimination claims for failure to adequately plead the existence of a material adverse action caused by his race. And it will dismiss most of his contract-based claims for want of a binding contract. Last, it will dismiss most of his remaining tort claims. That said, several of Newman's claims survive: all those directed against unnamed third parties, and several adequately pleaded claims directed against Howard and its employees.
The court rejects Newman's claim that the school violated some of its own policies, because it concludes the policies didn't form a binding contract. But it allows Newman's "breach of contract claim based on his scholarship agreement" (and related claim for "breach of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing") to go forward:
