By: Patricia Hamill and Lorie Dakessian
In a recent student discipline case not involving Title IX, the Ninth Circuit emphatically confirmed that a public school student disciplined for misconduct has a due process right to notice of the specific charges and the evidence against him. In K.J. by & through Johnson v. Jackson, 127 F.4th 1239 (9th Cir. 2025), the school suspended a student for fighting. The school then extended his suspension after concluding that he had “willfully caus[ed] serious injury to another person,” without informing him of the new charges or the evidence that was the basis for the extension. The student sued school officials for violating his due process rights. The district court granted defendants summary judgment.
The Ninth Circuit reversed, agreeing with the student that defendants had violated his due process rights. Among other things, the Court rejected defendants’ arguments that its procedures were sufficient because the suspension extension was not based on “a new event”: “A suspension extension is still a suspension from school, and a suspension extension based on new allegations or new evidence is effectively a second suspension. . . . Goss requires notice of the ‘charges’ against a student as well as an ‘explanation of the evidence the authorities have,’ not simply a description of the event in question. . . . Goss’s unambiguous focus is on the charges and evidence—the case—against the student and an opportunity to respond to that case.” Id at 1249-50 (citing Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 581 (1975)). The Court also stated that alleged notice to the student’s parents was not sufficient: the student himself was entitled to, and was not given, a meaningful opportunity to respond.
The Court allowed the student to seek both damages and expungement of the records of the suspension extension and expulsion recommendation from his disciplinary file, holding that expungement was not barred by Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity; the student had standing to seek injunctive relief at the time he filed his complaint; and his claim for injunctive relief was not moot because expungement remained a form of meaningful prospective relief, even though defendants had withdrawn their expulsion recommendation and the student had returned to school.
Although this case did not involve Title IX, its rulings are equally applicable to Title IX cases. Should a school add new charges or new penalties, it must give the respondent specific notice of the new charges and evidence, and a meaningful opportunity to respond. If it does not, a respondent may pursue both damages and expungement.
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