- A 3-3 split at the North Carolina Supreme Court means the University of North Carolina System wins a legal battle against students seeking partial refunds related to campus shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Lower courts had ruled against the student and parent plaintiffs. They had challenged a state law designed to protect the UNC System from COVID-related lawsuit tied to the spring 2020 semester.
- The ruling has no impact on a separate state Supreme Court case seeking refunds related to campus shutdowns at UNC Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University in fall 2020.
The North Carolina Supreme Court split, 3-3, in a case seeking to invalidate a state law protecting the University of North Carolina System from lawsuits related to COVID shutdowns in spring 2020.
The split announced Friday means a legal win for the university. A state Appeals Court ruling favoring the UNC system remains in place “without precedential value,” according to the high court’s two-page opinion.
Justice Tamara Barringer did not take part in the case. The court did not indicate Friday how the other six justices voted.
The decision does not affect a separate case at the state Supreme Court involving COVID-related campus shutdowns at UNC Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University in fall 2020. Justices heard arguments in both cases in October.
In Dieckhaus v. Board of Governors of UNC, students and parents from across the state sought partial refunds for money paid to the university system for the spring 2020 semester.
The Dieckhaus plaintiffs challenged a law the General Assembly passed in July 2020 to protect the university from legal action. Lower courts ruled in favor of the university.
“Our argument is that there is a contract that for payment of these fees and tuition the university system is going to provide these services,” argued lawyer Eric Poulin on Oct. 22. “They did not provide those services. Therefore, the contract was breached.”
“At that point we now have a cause of action … a vested claim to recover for that breach or to try to get our money back for the services that were not provided that we prepaid for, and the statute comes in and wipes out that remedy under the contract that existed,” Poulin added.
“This court and the US Supreme Court have repeatedly held that the state can withdraw its consent to be sued at any time,” lawyer Craig Schauer argued for the UNC System.
Justice Anita Earls questioned the extent of the General Assembly’s ability to limit lawsuits against the state.
“I’m just trying to understand how it’s possible to have a meaningful right that you can’t enforce,” she said. “Where is the limit on your principle that the sovereign can withdraw their consent to be sued at any time? Doesn’t that effectively mean that there are no enforceable contracts against the state of North Carolina?”
“I think your point is: What’s the value of a contract if you can’t enforce a remedy against the state?” Schauer responded. “There’s a potential harshness to the reality of sovereign immunity in this context.”
“Society has made a decision that we’re not going to allow those rights to result in a remedy because there are greater concerns at play,” he added. “I think that’s what you see in sovereign immunity.”
Schauer added that the General Assembly has relied on sovereign immunity “judiciously” during the state’s history.
Friday’s decision marks a final loss for the Dieckhaus plaintiffs.
In the separate case Lannan v. Board of Governors of UNC, a graduate student from NC State and a UNC Chapel Hill undergrad seek refunds for fees paid to the flagship campuses for the fall 2020 semester.
At that time, all other UNC System schools had reopened for in-person instruction after initial campus shutdowns related to COVID-19. NCSU and UNC-CH remained closed to most students while classes proceeded online. The lawsuit seeks recovery of fees paid for on-campus services unavailable to students in the fall 2020 semester.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled that the case should be allowed to move forward.
There’s no deadline for the state Supreme Court to issue a ruling in Lannan.