The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday rejected lingering claims by a University of Arkansas at Little Rock law professor who has fought with his school for years over a records request for admissions data.
Robert Steinbuch, a professor at UALR's William H. Bowen School of Law, reached a settlement with the school in 2018 in which he received the bulk of the records he had sought. However, he continued litigation against the school based on claims that school officials had retaliated against him and that a lower court judge had wrongly ordered him to hire an attorney to represent the students whose records he sought.
By a 5-2 ruling, the high court Thursday found that Steinbuch's remaining claims against the university were either moot, barred by sovereign immunity or otherwise defective.
The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Dan Kemp, fully upheld an earlier ruling by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox. Kemp's opinion was joined by Justice Shawn Womack and special justices Roger Rowe, James Crouch and Doug Schrantz.
Three justices, Courtney Hudson, Robin Wynne and Rhonda Wood, recused from the case.
Reached Thursday, Steinbuch expressed frustration with the court's opinion -- which he called "judicially and intellectually deficient" -- that left him with no options for an appeal.
"The Supreme Court rubber-stamped the arguments of the university," Steinbuch said. "There's too much of this kind of incestuous relationship between large governmental agencies, like the university, and the court system."
Nate Hinkel, a spokesman with the University of Arkansas System, said in an email Thursday that the system "is obviously pleased with the outcome of this case and feel like the law was properly applied given the facts that were presented."
Steinbuch's lawsuit against his employer stems from his ongoing research into race as a factor of the law school's admissions process.
In 2015, Steinbuch filed a Freedom of Information Act request for admissions data including students' race, sex, test scores and grade-point averages, among other data points. After his request was denied, Steinbuch filed suit for the records, and added other claims that university officials had illegally retaliated against him by conducting "sham" investigations into his grading policies.
In addition to the university, Steinbuch's lawsuit named Bowen School Dean Theresa Beiner and former dean Michael Schwartz. Steinbuch accused the pair of acting outside the scope of their job in retaliating against him. The university denied the claims.
Kemp dismissed the individual claims against Beiner and Schwartz, writing that the Arkansas Whistle-Blowers Act and the Arkansas Civil Rights Act only allow in lawsuits against an employer, and not individuals. Other claims were made moot by the parties' settlement, or barred by sovereign immunity, Kemp wrote.
Additionally, Kemp found that the deans could not have conspired to illegally interfere with Steinbuch's employment contract with the university because such claims require a third party.
"There was no third party involved, and Steinbuch did not sufficiently allege that Beiner and Schwartz acted outside the scope of their employment," Kemp wrote.
Kemp's opinion also dismissed several cross claims by UALR as moot.
Justice Karen Baker wrote a concurring opinion that dissented in part, while Justice Josephine "Jo" Hart dissented.
In her partial dissent, Baker continued to criticize the majority's interpretation of sovereign immunity in the Arkansas Constitution, which states that Arkansas "shall never be made defendant in her own courts." Since 2018, the Supreme Court has taken a generally strict approach to that language, while allowing waivers to sovereign immunity in other cases, creating "nonsensical" results, Baker wrote.
Steinbuch, too, said he was increasingly distressed by the court's sovereign immunity rulings and said a constitutional amendment to clarify the rule, as has been proposed by several lawmakers, might be necessary.
Metro on 12/06/2019