Three professors recently brought a class action lawsuit against Dallas College addressing faculty rights under the new state tenure law. Their case — Salvatore Frisella, Paul Patrick Day, and Howard Jeffrey Hughes V. Dallas College, filed in the Northern District of Texas Federal Court — could have broad-ranging implications for faculty across Texas according to the Texas Conference of the AAUP (Texas Conference of the AAUP via Twitter, @TexasAaup, 8 July 2024). The three faculty members are Professor Salvatore “Sal” Frisella (Biology/Ecology), Professor Paul Patrick Day (Geology), and Professor Howard “Jeff” Hughes (Biology/Ecology).
According to their amended complaint of June 7, 2024, the three were employed on an automatically renewable rolling 3-year contract, which they argue was a form of tenure. Under Texas Law, the policies and practices of the College automatically became part of a full-time faculty member’s contract because all parties were expected to comply with those policies. With other Dallas College faculty, the plaintiffs claim they continued to enjoy this employment status in anticipation of the Texas Legislature’s new tenure scheme which went into effect on September 1, 2023; however, in a series of actions between 2021 and the summer of 2023, the Dallas College Board of Trustees (the “Board”) revised policies to eliminate the long-standing “rolling 3-year contract.”
According to court documents, Professor Frisella worked under consecutive rolling three-year contracts since Fall 2006, and consistently met or exceeded expectations on his annual performance reviews; Professor Day continued teaching under consecutive rolling three-year contracts since Fall 2019, and consistently received “exceeds expectations” on his annual performance reviews; and Professor Hughes led classes on a series of consecutive rolling three-year contracts since Fall 2007, always meeting or exceeding expectations on his performance reviews.
Under then-existing policies and Dallas College’s long-standing practices, new three-year contracts would have been issued in May 2022, replacing the 2021-2024 contracts with 2022-2025 contracts. However, the lawsuit states that the Board voted January 11, 2022 “to remove the rolling three-year contracts and to instead pursue new contract, evaluation, and grievance systems for faculty that would eliminate the protections and property interest of the prior three-year contract policy.” With that said, as of May 2022, no new contracts were issued to either the three faculty members or any other faculty then under 2021-2024 contract.
In their filing, counsel for the plaintiffs argues Dallas College’s historic policy and practices harmonize with the statutory definition of tenure, since they all recognize university faculty cannot be dismissed without a showing of good cause and enjoy procedural due process. However, the policy changed which eviscerated the rolling three-year contract, and also “reached back in time” to strip rights from faculty who had signed their contracts under the previous policy. The faculty evaluation process was revised “to provide a ‘holistic’ (utterly non-transparent) system,” under which “a centralized group of administrators” evaluated faculty at the seven campuses — rather than peers or even supervisory administrators.
The three faculty members claim they were denied notice, a meaningful opportunity to be heard, or any other form of due process in their deprivation of those contracts or any subsequent contracts, “depriving them of their cognizable property interest in ongoing employment, salary, and benefits without due process.” Although the Board stripped faculty of their rights to three-year rolling contracts, and even though the new Texas statute on tenure prohibits a college from awarding tenure to an administrator that varies from the institution’s general policy on the award of tenure (Educ. Code § 51.942(f)), the lawsuit also claims that “the Chancellor, former Chancellor, and at least some administrators have been granted multi-year contracts, which have been renewed each year.”
The plaintiff’s complaint states that “Dallas College took action to punish a faculty base” due to some faculty (including one or more of Plaintiffs) “engaging in vocal and collaborative efforts to establish a faculty senate as an internal academic shared governance body of the college,” as well as on account of some faculty (including one or more of Plaintiffs) establishing and holding membership in an external, private professional organization, a local chapter of the AAUP, that sent formal letters to the Dallas College Board of Trustees critical of policies and actions by the Board and administration.”
According to Valeria Olivares and Brayden Garcia with The Dallas Morning News: “Some Dallas College faculty members called for [former] Chancellor Joe May’s immediate termination after they passed a no-confidence vote against him Friday, concerned about the handling of the school’s consolidation” (5 October 2021), and Simone Carter reports for The Dallas Observer: “Some have accused May of using the pandemic to build a corporate-style governance structure” (5 October 2021); consequently, the three plaintiffs claim their academic freedom is protected by the First Amendment as a particular type of free speech.
Finally, the lawsuit alleges that “decisions and votes taken by the Board at the January 2022 meeting, and at subsequent meetings when specific policy changes were adopted, were the result of violations of the Texas Open Meeting Act” (Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code.) The act provides that meetings of governmental bodies must be open to the public. Sec. 551.143 of the act proscribes a member or group of members knowingly conspiring to circumvent the Open Meetings Act by engaging in series of meetings in numbers less than a quorum for the purpose of secret deliberation. The lawsuit alleges that, during 2021, members of Dallas College’s administration, including its Chancellor, met with Board members individually or in groups “in a furtive manner to circumvent § 551.002’s prohibition on a quorum of the Board meeting in private to deliberate over public business.”
Counsel for the plaintiffs argues that the 14th Amendment prohibits Dallas College from depriving the three professors of their “property interest in their tenured employment, or any other rights, privileges, and/or immunities secured under the U.S. Constitution without due process, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 provides a mechanism for them to seek remedies for such deprivation.” Plaintiffs claim “actual damages, damages for mental anguish, and/or nominal damages for the deprivation of due process, in addition to attorney fees.”
In early July, Dallas College filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
For further information, please see: https://www.fundthefacultylawsuit.com/
Texas State University Chapter of AAUP 
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