U.S. appeals court dismisses claim by professor whose job disappeared

The University of Texas System did not wrongfully terminate a professor whose job was eliminated when the system merged two institutions in South Texas, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit came in one of numerous such claims filed by faculty members whose positions were threatened when the system merged the University of Texas Pan American and the University of Texas at Brownsville and created the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

In the case in question, the court ruled that Alexander Edionwe's legal interest in his tenured position at UT Pan American did not transfer to the newly created institution. That was among other factors that led the appeals court to uphold a lower court's decision rejecting his wrongful termination claim.