Ninth Circuit Dismisses Oregon Students’ Lawsuit Seeking COVID-19 Tuition Refund

A federal appellate court has dismissed a case filed by two Oregon State University students alleging the school breached contracts with them by moving classes online during the COVID-19 pandemic yet still charged full tuition. In an opinion issued on July 8, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously upheld a lower court’s ruling, which found that the plaintiffs could have taken the full refund the university had offered. The plaintiffs, students Danielle Pranger and Garrett Harris, paid tuition for the spring semester of 2020, when the OSU closed its campus and shifted to online instruction in response to the pandemic. They continued to enroll in online courses for spring 2020 and subsequent terms....