Students v. Student Records Office
74 U.Va 7 (2021)
Smith, J. delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case stands for one proposition: we do not like to read. Plaintiffs, defendants, and amici expect too much if they want us to actually peruse their lengthy briefs. Fortunately, a core principle of our jurisprudence decides this case.
I
Last year, due to the COVID pandemic, the law school decided to plan a twenty-minute cushion between classes, instead of the previous ten-minute cushion. In theory, the twenty-minute cushion would allow law students from one class to leave before students from the other class showed up, preventing clogged aisles and hallways. In part to allow for the twenty-minute cushion, the law school’s Student Records Office planned course sessions that were only seventy minutes long. In past years, classes were generally eighty minutes long, and they have returned to that length this year.
Plaintiffs strongly object to that extra ten minutes of class. The students, a mix of 2Ls and 3Ls, challenged it on a host of grounds. Student Records responded with a motion to dismiss. The lower court converted it to a motion for summary judgment because Student Records included affidavits asserting that the shorter classes “were no longer necessary,” and that the students are “just a bunch of lazy bums.” The students responded with a cross-motion for summary judgment. The court also allowed a few overzealous 1Ls and professors who feared losing extra class time to intervene. In the end, the court granted judgment for Student Records on all plaintiffs’ claims. The students appealed.
II
The Table of Contents of the students’ brief starts with the claim that the change was “arbitrary,” “capricious,” and “an abuse of discretion” under the Administrative Procedure Act.[1] The students seem to be correct at first glance. The privilege of acting arbitrarily and capriciously belongs exclusively to this Court. And like the defendants in a recent Supreme Court case, Student Records did not consider students’ reliance interests in keeping an existing policy—in this case, the seventy-minute class length.[2] Unfortunately, Professor Aditya Bamzai wrote a fifty-four-page amicus brief challenging our jurisdiction over this claim, and we don’t like to read. So we refrain from deciding the case on administrative law grounds.
The students also point to last year as course-of-performance evidence that Student Records has waived its right to force students to endure that extra ten agonizing minutes of class. [3] This argument also seems on-point. Regrettably, at oral argument counsel for the defendant responded to this argument with the (magic?) words “boilerplate, boilerplate, boilerplate,” and wheeled several boxes of paper over to our Bench. We are not sure what is in any of the boxes, but we sure don’t want to find out, so we will pass on that argument too.
The students fall back on a Fourteenth Amendment Due Process claim. They allege that the increased class time violates their right to “liberty.” The obvious and crushing rejoinder is that the plaintiffs are LAW STUDENTS. The plaintiffs have already mortgaged their future, forfeited their happiness, sold their souls, and pledged their liberty in exchange for the promise of mountains and mountains of cold hard cash. If plaintiffs feel “trapped” or “imprisoned,” it is because they are. Student Records is right to point out that we generally give prison officials broad discretion,[4] though we need not hold that law students are prisoners to decide that they have lost any liberty interest in not attending class.
III
As a last resort, the students ask us to create a new categorical rule. Pointing to our “founding doctrine” that “1Ls always lose,”[5] and last week’s (wholly unnecessary) holding that “journals also always lose,”[6] the students want us to declare that Student Records always loses. This is totally pointless, because the first of our categorical rules already decides this case quite neatly. A few 1Ls have intervened in support of longer classes; 1Ls always lose; therefore, the longer classes must go. We suggest that 1Ls think twice before intervening in future cases.
IV
The intervening 1Ls and professors argue that today’s outcome must be prevented lest Student Records compensate by taking away fall break or spring break. Similarly, Student Records claims that it must be permitted to make up the time by cutting out breaks. However, this Court has already ruled that “[a] mid-semester break is absolutely necessary.”[7] Student Records is hereby ORDERED to cut all eighty-minute classes down to seventy minutes while leaving fall and spring break intact.
REVERSED.
Tonseth., C.J. dissenting because I’m a 3L.
Show me a 3L that regularly goes to class, and I’ll show you a liar.[8] This base fact, strongly supported by my own personal penchant for spending class time at the golf course or pool, is enough to eliminate standing for most of the classes present. However, as Associate Justice Smith points out, 1Ls always lose too.[9] I’m pretty conflicted, as I’m also fully in support of a categorical rule that Student Records should be included under the umbrella of “always losing”. Therefore, as I think both sides to this case have weak arguments, I would dismiss this complaint for failing to satisfy the case and controversy requirement.
Are 70-minute classes overall better than their 80-minute counterparts? Maybe. It’s 10 more minutes for me to spend online shopping for another crop top or pit vipers, but also another 10 minutes that I can’t have a sip of water. Plus, it’s whimsical to believe that my attention span lasts past the review each professor gives at the beginning of class.[10] What am I really arguing for here? The 10 minutes makes no difference. The funny thing about the liberty argument that Justice Smith forgets is that law students can just leave class when there’s 10 minutes left! Don’t want to hear rambling hypotheticals? Bounce. Ready to start happy hour 7 hours early, after your Monday morning PR class? Come find me and let me join. Just want to go home and have another existential crisis? Be our guest. Law school is what you make of it, and I’ve spent a lot of it learning by the pool and on the golf course. Don’t let the man keep you down. Viva la liberty.
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js3hp@virginia.edu
pjt5hm@virginia.edu
[1] 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A).
[2] See Dep’t Homeland Sec. v. Regents Univ. Cal., 410 S. Ct. 1891 (2020).
[3] See UCC § 1-303.
[4] See, e.g., Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 413 (1989).
[5] See, e.g., Snowman v. Student Administration, 73 U.Va. 15 (2021) (Tonseth, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
[6] Jilted Students v. Journals, 74 U.Va. 6 (2021)
[7] Law Students for Fall Break v. The Law School, 73 U.Va. 7 (2020).
[8] Look, it’s me.
[9] Supra nt. 5. Don’t ask me if I did that citation right, I already said journals lose too so their opinions and comments aren’t valid on the Court.
[10] Shoutout Professor Coughlin, I appreciate you.