Miami’s St. Thomas University is settling a lawsuit brought in Florida state court by former tenured law professor Lauren Gilbert, who accused the school of wrongful termination and defamation, according to her lawyer.

Gilbert’s claims against the St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law stemmed from the fallout of a separate complaint filed with the American Bar Association in 2023, in which she and six other law school faculty members accused the school’s administration of discriminating against the LGBTQ+ community, forcing tenured faculty out and misrepresenting its finances.

The conflict between the law school faculty and the administration dates back to 2022, when faculty pushed back against plans to consolidate certain arms of the law school together. Around the same time, faculty also sided with a student-run LGBTQ+ group that accused the president of discriminating against it, according to the complaint.

The Lambda Law Society, which aims to spread awareness of LGBTQ+ issues, is a recognized student organization with access to Student Bar Association funds, according to its website.

But when it requested money from the Student Bar Association to attend a Pride parade in 2022, the school blocked the group from using it, according to the ABA complaint. The school also barred the group from using funds it raised independently and from wearing any clothes that would represent the school in any way at the parade.

Shortly after the incident, the law school’s dean abruptly resigned and university president David Armstrong appointed John Makdisi as interim dean without consulting with any of the faculty, the complaint said. Makdisi, a property law scholar, was previously dean of the law school, but resigned in 2003 after receiving a vote of no confidence.

Following his appointment, Makdisi sent a letter throughout the law school that faculty deemed to be a threat to free speech.

“[T]o disparage the ethical and religious principles which give full meaning to human life is antithetical to our tradition. These include life, religion, marriage between a man and a woman, family, and the human person, in his or her liberty, dignity, sense of responsibility, and openness to the transcendent. Thus, a member of our community who publicly advocates the death of another person by abortion or euthanasia violates these values, whether it be by social media, public rallies or otherwise,” the letter stated.

Tensions grew even further after Makdisi began instituting “law school governance (and hiring) of select aspects of Catholic dogma that contradicted STU’s (then-current) published non-discrimination policies,” the ABA complaint said.

Makdisi also began punishing certain professors with the goal of forcing them out, according to the allegations.

Then, after faculty unanimously voted to hire and tenure an openly gay professor, Makdisi allegedly informed staff that the school would not hire him because of his sexual orientation, according to the complaint.

The complaint accuses Makdisi of continually refusing to hire other candidates if he decided they were too progressive or sympathetic to the LGBTQ+ community.

“One faculty member was removed from the Recruitment Committee and relieved of their administrative position shortly after criticizing this practice,” the complaint said.

The president eventually pushed judge Tarlika Nuñez-Navarro through to hire as permanent dean to replace Makdisi without consulting faculty or the school’s search committee, the allegations stated. Nuñez-Navarro replaced Makdisi in August 2023.

According to the complaint, some faculty members were alarmed that Nuñez-Navarro had no prior experience as an administrator at any ABA-accredited law schools. She was an adjunct professor at Florida A&M University, teaching advanced trial practice just before her appointment as dean.

Before that, she was appointed to serve on two circuit court benches by then-Gov. Rick Scott and current Gov. Ron DeSantis. She served those benches for a total of almost six years.

All the tension that built up during this time led to at least 21 faculty members and administrators eventually leaving the school. The complaint also states that the school’s lack of hiring to replace some of those professors left it severely understaffed and unprepared to teach the incoming class.

“For example, given the departure in the past twelve months of three professors who taught Civil Procedure, in Fall 2023, all but one section of Civil Procedure will be taught by professors new to the institution,” the complaint stated.

The final allegation in the ABA complaint states that President Armstrong lied to the ABA about the school’s reserves and endowment funds. Armstrong told the ABA that the school had over $12 million in funds from 2016 to 2018.

After stating that to the ABA, the complaint alleges that Armstrong then told faculty that the school had no money in endowment and reserves. When asked why he told the ABA that the school had money, he allegedly told faculty that he lied to the ABA.

The complaint also accuses Armstrong and his administration of lacking transparency regarding how school funds are spent.
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Lawsuit Settlement and Admission of Wrongdoing

Professor Lauren Gilbert, a formerly tenured professor who signed the complaint, was fired in July. The same day she was fired, her colleague Ira Nathenson also announced his resignation from the faculty.

Two weeks after Gilbert’s firing, another tenured law professor, Stephen Plass, committed suicide, according to several sources.

The day before his death, Plass was apparently distressed about rumors that the school would re-tenure John Makdisi, who was blamed by many for facilitating Armstrong’s alleged dismantling of the law school, according to Gilbert, who spoke to the Daily Business Review in September before she reached a settlement with the school.

After Gilbert’s firing, the school sent the ABA Journal her letter of termination, in which she’s accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a graduate and of being a danger to students.

Gilbert then sued the school for violating its policy that prohibits disseminating employee records and for defamation.

In October, the school settled with Gilbert for an undisclosed amount. The school released a statement announcing the settlement and admitting to causing Gilbert harm by releasing her termination letter.

“The University does not have any evidence that Professor Gilbert engaged in any dating, intimate relationship, or sexual conduct with a student in any form. To the extent that readers of the ABA Journal story drew any such conclusions, we regret any confusion or false impression,” the statement said. “The University wishes to clarify that Professor Gilbert herself was not considered to be a physical danger to anyone … We deeply regret any confusion or incorrect impression, and any harm to Professor Gilbert's reputation that the release of the letter may have caused.”

Both Gilbert and her lawyer David Frakt refused to comment on the settlement. But they did confirm that Gilbert signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of the settlement and that the university’s statement was part of the terms of the settlement agreement.

But before she settled with the university, Gilbert spoke to the Daily Business Review in September about the circumstances that led to her firing.

She doubled down on what was in the ABA complaint and said the ABA paid a visit to St. Thomas University around the time of her firing as part of an accreditation investigation.

In 2023, the university renamed the law school the Benjamin L. Crump College of Law after the civil rights attorney that represented Goerge Floyd’s family, among many other civil rights cases. Crump got his name on the school after he raised $10 million for the school’s social justice center.

Armstrong, who arrived at St. Thomas in 2018 after leading another Catholic liberal arts college, and Crump both spoke at the law school’s renaming center, along with actor Will Smith.

"When you invest in this great institution, the St. Thomas University Ben Crump College of Law, what you invest in is the opportunity to be part of a spark of light. A spark that will ignite the change that will help make the law be an instrument for good, not a weapon for evil," Crump said during his speech.

At the time, Armstrong emphasized that his political views were at odds with Crump’s and that he wanted to include more conservative viewpoints into the school’s community.

"We already have the center for social justice and it will do its work. We will have conservative centers and institutes at our college," he said in 2023. "We gotta have balance in this country, and we've lost some balance. So we will have both because that's what a legal education is."

Gilbert alleged to the DBR in September that the renaming was part of an attempt to paper over the school’s image after the dust up over LGBTQ+ discrimination and the other attempts to restrict faculty voices. But she insists that the school has kept trying to ram its conservative agenda onto everyone at the school.

Frakt said Tuesday he’s also representing another client threatening to sue the university for separate but unspecified reasons.

He also said he’s closely anticipating the release of an American Bar Association investigation into the university, which he expects to be scathing against the school.

"St. Thomas University and its College of Law are currently undergoing a review by the American Bar Association. Throughout this process, we have cooperated fully with the ABA to address any questions regarding our compliance, and we are confident in our adherence to all accreditation standards. Meanwhile, our College of Law remains dedicated to excellence, continuing to set records and exceed expectations in both academic and social achievements," a St. Thomas spokesperson said in a statement in response to the allegations. "While it would be inappropriate to discuss the subject matter of the ABA’s review in detail at this time, as the review is ongoing, we feel it is important to directly address the false allegations suggesting that the University and College of Law have unlawfully discriminated against the LAMBDA Law group and/or LGBTQ+ employees. These claims are unequivocally untrue."

The university was being represented by Ricky Patel, an Akerman attorney who earned his J.D. from the school. But it has since hired local attorney Roberto Diaz to tackle the lawsuit from Gilbert.