High court backs colleges in suits over tenure

Monday, April 1, 2002 | 9:53 a.m.

SUN CAPITAL BUREAU

CARSON CITY -- The University and Community College System of Nevada is immune from lawsuits over decisions of granting tenure to professors, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

The court rejected the appeal of Marcella A. McClure, an assistant professor in the biological science department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

McClure sued in November 1999 after she was denied tenure, claiming a breach of contract, wrongful termination, breach of fair dealing and emotional distress. District Judge Gene Porter dismissed the suit, a decision the Supreme Court upheld.

The Supreme Court said McClure does not have a "contractual entitlement to tenure, (and) there can be no breach of covenant of good faith and dealing."

Tenure, granted after a trial period, protects educators from summary dismissal and is considered key to the concept of academic freedom.

McClure was hired in 1993 and under the terms of the contract was to be evaluated for tenure after three years. She was denied tenure by UNLV President Carol Harter in 1997.

Under the terms of the contract, McClure either had to receive tenure or would be issued a nonrenewable one-year employment contract.

In her appeal, she said she was the only tenure candidate to be evaluated in the category of "collegiality," or how well she got along with her peers. Letters were solicited from other faculty members on their opinion of her "collegiality."

The letters are not normally part of the evaluation process. McClure was graded as unsatisfactory in the area, and the letters were placed in her personnel file. Harter, when she denied tenure, chose to strike the letters from the file.

The Supreme Court said the university has the discretion to use collegiality as a basis for a tenure decision. It also said there was "nothing inappropriate" in soliciting the opinions of other faculty members about McClure.

"Even if removing the letters from McClure's personnel file may have been inappropriate, we perceive no legal consequence to that act," the court wrote.