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A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Bloomsburg University officials are immune from being sued for dismissing a student from a nurse anesthetist program because she refused to take a drug test required by the private hospital that conducted the academic program's clinical component. The court concluded as well that officials at the hospital could not be sued for their decision to dismiss the student from the clinical program, which the judges said did not amount to state action.
The head of the clinical program at Geisinger Medical Center, in Pennsylvania, kicked the student out of the clinical program it operated for Bloomsburg's nurse anesthetist master's degree program because she declined to take a drug test. A lower court ruled that because the clinical program was conducted with Bloomsburg, a public university, the hospital acted under color of state law, and that Bloomsburg was also liable because its officials had gone along with the student's dismissal.
In its ruling, though, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned the lower court's decision, saying that the hospital official was acting in his capacity as an administrator there (not at Bloomsburg) when he made his decision to bar the student from clinical training. The court ruled, too, that Bloomsburg and its officials were protected by state immunity because there was insufficient evidence that the university could have stopped the hospital's decision.
"Because … [the hospital and its officials] are not state actors with respect to [the] decision to dismiss [the student] and … [the university's official] is entitled to qualified immunity for her involvement in [the student's] termination, we hold that no defendant is liable," the court wrote.
