Help Law Prof Lauren Gilbert Fight Her Wrongful Termination

Do you care about academic freedom? Are you concerned about the erosion of the rights of university employees? Do you care about the rule of law? If so, I am asking for your help. Have you ever heard of a tenured full professor being treated as an at-will employee, summarily terminated with one day’s notice? Well, neither had I – until it happened to me.

On July 18, 2024, after 22 years on the faculty at St. Thomas University College of Law in Miami, including 15 as a tenured full professor, I was given a notice of termination and one day to clear out of my office. And that was the day that I became the first tenured law professor in the country to be fired without due process.

My contract specifically guaranteed that I could not be fired without both informal and due process, including the right to a hearing in front of my fellow tenured faculty members, the opportunity to be informed of the charges against me, the opportunity to review the evidence against me, and the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses and present witnesses and evidence of my own. As a licensed lawyer myself, I knew my rights and I sought to get the University to honor them. But my demands that they honor my contractual rights were ignored. I reached out to the American Association of University Professors for assistance. AAUP wrote a letter to the Dean stating: “the administration’s action to dismiss Professor Gilbert without having first demonstrated adequacy of cause in a faculty hearing is fundamentally at odds with basic standards of academic due process.” AAUP urged the Dean to “rescind the notice of dismissal” and comply with these standards. The Dean simply ignored the letter.

Although I could not easily afford it, especially just having lost my job, I realized I could not fight this fight on my own. A former colleague recommended that I contact David Frakt, a lawyer who specializes in representing professors. (See theprofessorslawyer.com). Luckily, David was willing to take my case. David immediately reached out to the University’s general counsel on my behalf. He was told that the University had hired a major law firm, akerman, to handle the case. When David contacted akerman’s attorney, the first thing he told him was the University President and Board had authorized an unlimited budget to litigate my case and that no expense would be spared to defeat me.

So what terrible things have I done that the University would take such extreme action as terminating a tenured professor without contractually guaranteed due process? Why is the University so angry that they would devote such an extraordinary amount of resources to end my career? The short answer is that I stood up to the Dean of the Law School and the President of the University. I refused to go along with their discriminatory actions. I refused to accept their blatant violations of academic freedom. I refused to be cowed by their efforts to silence me. Even worse, I reported their multiple egregious violations of accreditation standards to their accrediting agency, the American Bar Association (ABA).

My story is part of a larger story, the story of a rogue law school and University administration that has sought to purge all professors deemed insufficiently loyal to the administration, especially those faculty members deemed to be troublemakers because they wouldn't readily toe the party line and had a tendency to stand up for their rights and the rights of others and an annoying habit of reminding the administration of its obligations under applicable law and standards.

This story began in March 2022, when the faculty unanimously adopted a resolution criticizing St. Thomas University President Armstrong for discriminating against the LAMBDA Law Society, a student organization advocating for the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals,. Since then, the administration has used every means at their disposal, both legal and illegal, to remove those faculty members considered undesirable. Over a dozen tenured and long-term contract faculty members, well over half-the senior faculty, have resigned, retired or accepted buy-outs in the last two years. One committed suicide. I was one of the last holdouts who refused to succumb to their pressure campaign to voluntarily resign, so they built a phony case against me for termination.

When they realized that terminating me through the processes required in my contract would likely fail, they decided to just ignore my clearly delineated due process rights and summarily terminate me. The Dean’s termination letter cited the flimsiest justification imaginable for converting me from a tenured professor into an at-will employee, a legal interpretation that doesn’t even pass a basic smell test. In an effort to deter my efforts to speak out and expose the University’s actions, the University's attack dogs at the Akerman law firm, threatened to sue me for defamation for supposedly "alleging that President Armstrong is homophobic and discriminates against the gay community" and making knowingly false and defamatory statements. When my attorney David Frakt asked them to provide a single example of such a statement, they did not respond.

The University’s strategy has become clear. They knew very well they had no right to terminate me without due process, but they did anyway. Knowing how expensive it is to hire a competent attorney and to take on a wealthy and powerful institution, they assumed that I would quickly settle for a small payout (they offered me three month’s severance) in exchange for a waiver of my rights and signing a non-disclosure agreement. Well, St. Thomas University underestimated me. They have messed with the wrong woman and I am not going down without a fight. My attorney has already filed a declaratory judgment complaint asking the Circuit Court in Miami-Dade County to reinstate me and order the University to comply with my contract and afford me due process if they wish to seek to terminate me. If they do that, I am confident that the University will not be able to establish adequate cause for my termination and that I will ultimately be vindicated by my peers. But I know that this fight is going to be long, and expensive. I am 63 years old and can’t readily find another job, certainly not one with a comparable salary and benefits. The University canceled my health insurance and I had to sign up for COBRA.

So that is why I am asking for your help. Please donate to help me pay for my legal expenses. The filing fees, summons and service of process for the complaint my lawyer filed alone are more than $500. And while David Frakt has generously agreed to handle my case at a greatly reduced rate, I have already expended several thousand dollars in legal fees in the four weeks since I was wrongfully terminated. If you can spare even a little bit to help me, it would mean a great deal to me. Thank you very much for your consideration.