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Illinois Supreme Court
Inside Higher Ed
Irreplaceable... Tenured Professors win court battle
Community colleges cannot lay off faculty members and then hire
adjuncts to teach their courses, the Illinois Supreme Court decided.
By Lilah Burke
January 4, 2021
In 2016, 27 tenured faculty members at John A. Logan Community College
in Illinois were laid off. The following year, seven of those faculty
members sued the Board of Trustees, arguing that the college replaced
them with adjuncts in violation of the Illinois Public Community
College Act. Last month, the Illinois Supreme Court sided with the
faculty.
The decision is a rare win for tenured faculty, who have seen their
power and job protections erode in recent years. Numerous institutions
have laid off faculty members this year, and at some, administrators
have all but stated the professors will be replaced with adjuncts, who
are cheaper to employ.
The decision won't affect professors outside Illinois or those working
for four-year institutions, but it sets a precedent that a community
college in the state cannot lay off full-time faculty members to
replace them with adjuncts.
Much of the Illinois Supreme Court case rested on interpretation of a
few words in the law. The Public Community College Act stipulates that
laid-off faculty members shall have preferred right of reappointment
for about two years for positions they are qualified for, “provided
that no non-tenure faculty member or other employee with less seniority
shall be employed to render a service which a tenured faculty member is
competent to render.”
The majority opinion held that “other employees with less seniority”
includes adjunct instructors. The dissenting opinion argued, in part,
that because adjuncts cannot accrue any seniority at all, the clause
does not refer to them.
“As I argued and the majority found, no seniority is less than some
seniority,” said Loretta Haggard, a lawyer for the faculty members. “To
say that someone isn’t capable of earning seniority and therefore they
don’t fall within the definition of someone who has less seniority
doesn’t really make sense.”
The plaintiffs alleged that during the 2016-17 academic year, the Board
of Trustees employed adjuncts to teach their classes, even when enough
work existed to employ them directly. In the four years since the
layoffs, all seven of the professors were recalled to their positions,
making the case more about back pay and a precedent than about
reinstatement.
“Plaintiffs were discharged because the board decided to reduce the
number of faculty members that the college employed, not because the
board disputed their competence to teach the courses,” the majority
wrote. “Thus, we conclude that the board employed adjunct instructors
-- other employees with less seniority than plaintiffs -- to render a
service, namely, to teach a course or courses, that plaintiffs were
competent to render, in violation of section 3B-5 of the Act.”
Haggard and her firm, Schuchat Cook & Werner, worked with the
Illinois Education Association with the intention of bringing the case
to the Illinois Supreme Court and challenging a 1987 appeals court
decision that had asserted the legality of the practice.
“Today’s decision further proves unions are necessary and that their
work to help protect educator and worker jobs is essential to the
greater good,” the firm wrote in a statement. “Because of the union’s
work on the plaintiffs’ behalf, the high-quality education Illinois
students receive at community colleges will be preserved by ensuring
talented, experienced full-time faculty will remain in the classroom.”
In 2016, when the faculty were originally dismissed, the college cited
the Illinois budget impasse -- a years-long crisis wherein the state
did not have a complete budget -- and a resulting $7 million gap as the
reasons for the cuts, which also affected staff and nontenured faculty.
Students and employees protested the cuts, but the board voted for them
7 to 1. The chair of the board was accused of intimidating the lone
dissenter, a student trustee, when he brandished documents about her
past legal troubles during the board meeting, The Southern Illinoisan
reported.
Officials at John A. Logan Community College and their legal team did
not respond to requests for comment. The Illinois Community College
Board declined to comment, deferring to the college.
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