Standalone Approach To Education

The Standalone Approach to Education Property Interests The main alternative to the state-based approach is a standalone approach, where courts hold that there is a standalone property interest in education. Currently, the First, Sixth, and Tenth Circuits use the standalone approach to property interests. Most courts using this approach rely on Goss as the basis for their position. For example in Gorman v. University of Rhode Island, the First Circuit held that “[i]t is also not questioned that a student’s interest in pursuing an education is included within the fourteenth amendment’s protection of liberty and property.” Some courts may not provide hardly any analysis on the question of whether there is a property interest, and instead …show more content…
Currently the Fifth and Eighth Circuit almost exclusively use the assumption approach. Courts are able to do so because it is very rare for courts to determine that there was not enough process provided to a student and so courts can use downstream methods of shutting down due process cases. Another common occurrence is for some courts in a circuit to use an assumption approach while another court in the same circuit will use either the state-based approach or the standalone approach. For example, in Hennessy v. City of Melrose, the First Circuit indicated that the First Circuit had previously held a student had a protected interest in their education, but that for the purposes of this case they would instead assume a student has a property interest. These sort of intra-circuit splits have created confusion for district courts on what approach they should be using. What is unclear is how long such an approach can last given it does not legally speak to whether a property interest exists for a student and so if for example a student did not receive sufficient process, it is unclear whether they would have a valid due process claim in the circuits using the assumption …show more content…
The Supreme Court has made it clear that property interests must come from state law or another independent source, and so approaches which do not rely on state law, such as the standalone approach used by some circuits, should be rejected. Courts should also actively seek to determine whether a student has a property interest instead of assuming such an interest. The first part of this section will address why the state-based approach should be used, while the second part will discuss issues with the assumption approach and why it should be