Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court: One Cheer for Tenure!
Plaintiffs, tenured faculty members at Tufts, sued alleging breach of academic freedom and contractual rights granted through tenure. A trial court granted summary judgment to Tufts on all counts, and plaintiffs appealed. In Wortis v. Trustees of Tufts College, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court noted that economic security and academic freedom are “important norms in the academic community.” It therefore reversed the grant of summary judgment as to changes in salary and demotion from full-time to part-time (FTE) status. However, no such norms guarantee access to lab facilities, so the Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the grant of summary judgment on claims relating to Tufts’ lab space commitments to plaintiffs.
Tufts was under budgetary pressure. As of 2018, it had a $6 million operating deficit. As of 2017, it found that it needed $20 million to support “basic science research infrastructure.” As a result, it changed its policies regarding lab space commitments and full-time status in 2016, 2017, and 2019. Plaintiffs had their salaries cut dramatically and they were informed that they would have their lab space reduced or eliminated. That has not yet occurred.
The Court begins its analysis by noting that “[t]enure, and the benefits it confers, is defined by the contract between a university and a tenured professor.” But the devil is in the details. What specific promises or guarantees does tenure provide? There is no single document that sets out the mutual obligations of the parties to a tenure agreement. In this case, there are tenure letters, a faculty handbooks, and various university policy documents. The court finds the language in the various documents ambiguous on many issues. Do they set out promises about lab space commitments going forward or do they simply describe the current state of affairs? Do expectations for tenured faculty members set out what one needs to do to get tenure or to retain it?
By LornaMCampbell – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Court repeatedly notes that economic security is a term of the agreement between the plaintiffs and Tufts and is not merely “prefatory or hortatory.” Tenure, once granted is “permanent and continuous.” However, “economic security” is also ambiguous. That being the case, the Court seems to want to determine what reasonable people would have understood as the parameters of economic security. The Court notes that, before 2009, when the most junior of plaintiffs was granted tenure, Tufts had never linked salaries to ability to attract outside funding, and so plaintiffs would not have known that their salaries could be reduced for that reason. However, Tufts did link salaries to grants in 2009, actually reducing some of plaintiffs’ salaries at that time, and none objected. The more recent policies involve more drastic salary reductions, but still, the record is ambiguous.
The record on lab space commitments was less ambiguous. On that subject, the court was mindful that lab space is limited and expensive. It concluded that “even if economic security places limits on the ability of Tufts to reduce the plaintiffs’ salary or FTE status, it does not preclude Tufts from allocating limited and expensive lab space based on a faculty member’s ability to recover the costs incurred in building and operating lab infrastructure.” Moreover, plaintiffs have not been deprived of lab space. Tufts continues to commit itself to providing appropriate space for faculty members to conduct research. It follows that plaintiffs’ academic freedom and ability to apply for grants has not been curtailed.
And so, the Supreme Judical Court reversed the judgment of the Superior Court and remanded the case as to the plaintiffs’ claims regarding the compensation policies their Wage Act claim. It affirmed the Superior Court’s judgment as to the plaintiffs’ lab space guidelines claims.