A federal appeals court has reversed a lower court and held that a student can pursue her breach of contract lawsuit against a university in connection with it switching to online courses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kelsey Delisle and Kaitlin Pennington, who were enrolled in private McKendree University in Lebanon, Illinois, sued the institution in U.S. District Court in Benton, Illinois, for breach of contract and unjust enrichment because of the switch, according to Wednesday’s ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in Kelsey Delisle and Kaitlin Pennington v. McKendree University.
The district court ruled Ms. Delisle did not have an express contract with the university and also dismissed her alternative unjust enrichment claim.
It was overturned by a three-judge appeals court panel, which cited the appeals court’s earlier rulings in Omar Hernandez v. Illinois Institute of Technology and Andrea Gociman et al. v. Loyola University of Chicago and reinstated the contract claims.
“As Delisle identified in her complaint, McKendree’s college catalog appears to differentiate between the university’s on-campus and online programs,” including restricting undergraduate students attending the Lebanon campus to only one online course per semester.
“Our precedent makes clear that this kind of language is ‘enough for the court to make the resonate inference – at the pleading stage – that students were promised in-person instruction,’” the ruling said, in citing the Gociman ruling. It reversed the district court’s dismissal of the contract claim, and gave Ms. Delisle the opportunity to amend her alternative unjust enrichment claim.
Attorneys in the case did not respond to requests for comment.
