Academia, Lawyering, Society

Law Student Sues Baylor For Age Discrimination

Since prospective law professors are suing law schools on the basis of age discrimination, it did not take long for law students to follow suit. C. Michael Kamps of Rockwall, Texas, is suing Baylor Law School for age discrimination on the grounds that he went to college before the use of grade inflation — resulting in a discriminatory impact based on his age.

The complaint below includes an interesting presentation of the grade differential in universities over time. A certified accountant, Kamps actually did quite well on that LSAT and I am a bit surprised that he was not admitted at Baylor. He scored in the 97th percentile with a score of 169. However, he only had a 3.2 grade point average at Texas A & M when he graduated in 1979. Knowing this was likely to be a problem, he submitted proof that this GPA put him in the top 25 percent of his school at the time. Nevertheless he was waited listed and not admitted. As with the lawsuit in Iowa, he is also alleging that he was retaliated against for suing the school.

The lawsuit also includes a speadsheet mistakenly released by Baylor showing the LSAT scores and GPAs of Baylor’s incoming fall of 2012 class. Baylor asked students to delete the email and keep the information a secret. Kamps found that his combined scores were better than 68 percent of the students.

I must confess that I do not see why these scores would not place Kamps in the class. However, schools use a multivariate selection process in such selections. That makes it difficult to challenge such decisions. Yet, many schools rely overwhelmingly on the combined score system, particularly lower ranked schools. The lawsuit highlights the pressures in maintaining a higher combined score due to the weight given to the score by U.S. News and World Report in its annual ranking.

Baylor is ranked 51st in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.

The complaint below make for interesting reading, though the age discrimination claim will be difficult to establish. I do believe, however, that he has a point about the failure to consider the class position in light of the change in grade curves. The problem is that the annual report on scores does not allow schools to differentiate or unilaterally inflate the GPA. Illinois was just sanctioned for false reporting of scores by the ABA.

BaylorSuit

Source: ABA Journal

16 thoughts on “Law Student Sues Baylor For Age Discrimination”

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  3. Check out this Baylor graduate. When he was the pastor of the church where the Southern Baptist Convention was founded ( First Baptist, Augusta , Ga.), the then-organist there was a homosexual pedophile, but the minister did nothing, because he was married and having an affair. I attended that church, was baptized there, an am also a Baylor graduate, Baylor’s senior executives were the meanest and most hypocritical persons
    you CAN’T imagine were big-time Baptists.

    http://chronicle.augusta.com/life/your-faith/2012-07-21/1948-olympian-robert-jack-robinson-returns-london-games

  4. It might depend on Where The Money Went– if there were federal funds given to the department of law, or law school. See the following case under this statute cited by the plaintiff here against Baylor.

    Nondiscrimination provisions of Rehabilitation Act and Age Discrimination Act were not applicable to student’s application for admission to graduate English Department, where university’s assistant director for federal grants and contracts testified English Department had not received any federal financial assistance, except for federal funds awarded to English Department members to participate in university’s separate summer program, and no evidence was produced to warrant finding that university’s English Department was recipient of federal financial assistance. Stephanidis v. Yale University, D.Conn.1986, 652 F.Supp. 110, affirmed 814 F.2d 654. Civil Rights 1069; Civil Rights 1061

    If Baylor Law School is not a recipient of federal financial assistance then there is no go here.

    Do not confuse the statute in question here with the ADEA which is called the Age Discrimination In Employment Act. That statute involves employment, not student applications.

    This guy’s statistical proof will be difficult because the reason why He did not get higher grades may not be due to grade inflation. Few credible experts would testify to his thesis.

  5. Aha, so I was right. They do teach the bad stuff. I wonder how my friend missed it.

  6. BettyKath, some of my best friends are lawyers.

    That said, one of my best friends who is also a lawyer told me once: “Remember we SELF-SELECT for law school.”

    ANother best friend who went to ONE YEAR of law school had to quit because she said they were “teaching immorality in contract law so if I ever got to the other stuff, constitutional, criminal, family, I would be in danger of selling my soul to Satan.”

  7. I considered law school as a second career after I quit the first one. Then I had the misfortune of interacting with a few lawyers. I couldn’t imagine choosing a day to day existence that regularly put me into contact with people of such arrogance, greed, and lack of ethics. It took a few more years before I actually met a lawyer who was competent, ethical, not greedy, and not arrogant. We discussed this situation. It was his take that it isn’t the fault of the law schools so much (I was sure there was a class or two that taught these characteristics) as the character of those who choose law. There are good lawyers and bad lawyers, but it’s the bad ones that people, or at least me, seem to find.

  8. Mr. Kamps may have a point. The average score at Baylor according to LSN seem to be about 159 with a gpa of 3.68. Usually a high score balances the lower gpa.

  9. I don’t think the age issue will be successful, but if his grades and LSAT score put him in the ballpark, I think he has an argument that something isn’t kosher. I just don’t know if he can prove the age discrimination. A disparate impact argument maybe???

  11. Frankly, there are numerous stories of people over, say, 50 who have gone back to school and received a degree, whether or not they actually USED it. One of my friends’ mothers went back to nursing school at 55 and got her RN. To me, the most obvious way to fill a class at ANY school would be to let ANYONE who wants to study a particular discipline do so, without worrying about SATs, LSATS, CLEPs, GPAs, etc. If someone isn’t ‘cut out’ to be, say, a lawyer, the course work itself would be the determining factor. Of course, the real question to me would be why would ANYONE want to go to Baylor in the FIRST place (and I say this as a recovering Southern Baptist).

  15. Center For Constitutional Rights sues CIA and Military for targeted
    killings of Amerikan citizens as a violation of constitutional rights????

    What say ye, Mr. Turley…i believe there are several other lawsuits
    on similar subjects????

  16. You touched on it in your post – the school uses many variables to determine entry and LSAT+GPA is not the end all and be all. He may be right about it coming down to his age but there is no way I can see that he can prove that. The admissions folks can offer an explanation that it was those “other factors” that pushed him down the stack.

    Given that he is at least in his mid-50s I would question the usefulness of an LLD. I’m 60 & would love to go to law school (yeah, I may be masochistic) but wouldn’t dream of taking a seat from someone who could use that degree to build an actual career.

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