Dudley v. Boise State Univ., No. 24-3233, 2025 WL 2462966 (9th Cir. Aug. 27, 2025)
Plaintiff sued her university for revoking her bachelor’s degree after a state agency determined that plaintiff had misused a state database to access third party confidential information. Plaintiff alleged violations of her Fourteenth Amendment procedural and substantive due process rights. The district court dismissed plaintiff’s suit, reasoning that she lacked a property interest in her degree.
The Ninth Circuit reversed on this threshold issue, holding that plaintiff has a constitutionally protected property interest in her degree that may not be rescinded without due process. The court explained that the Idaho Code has mandatory language requiring a university to confer a degree upon completion of the program of instruction, and the cost of tuition creates an ascertainable monetary value of the degree. As a result, plaintiff’s college degree is a property interest that cannot be rescinded without due process.
The Court of Appeals’ opinion follows the Supreme Court’s framework for determining what qualifies as a protectable property interest. See The Bd. of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 577 (1972) (to have a property interest in a benefit, a person must “have a legitimate claim of entitlement to it” not just an “abstract need or desire.”); see also Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 598 (1972) (teacher’s public employment was protected property right.)
