A federal appeals court has overturned the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by former sonography students at a Florida college after they allegedly faced retaliation for objecting to undergoing transvaginal ultrasound procedures as part of their sonography training.
In a decision published on October 4, three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the complaint against four employees at Valencia College was erroneously dismissed by a district court.
Three former students in the sonography program at Valencia College had initially filed suit against the school and school employees in early 2015, claiming they were being punished for refusing to participate in transvaginal ultrasound scans as part of their education. The complaint in the case alleged that school employees initially told students that the scans were voluntary, but later retaliated against the students after they objected to the studies. The plaintiffs also said college employees pressured two of them into participating. All three students subsequently left the sonography program.
A few weeks after the lawsuit became public, Valencia College announced it was permanently discontinuing the practice, and that it would use simulators rather than student volunteers. Although the Valencia College Board of Trustees was initially listed as a defendant in the case, it is no longer a party in the litigation. In November 2015, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida dismissed the case, ruling that the school had limited immunity and that there was little merit to the students' claims that their privacy and free speech had been violated.
The appeals court disagreed with the basis for that dismissal, however.
"Because the district court erroneously classified the students' speech as school-sponsored expression and the district court erroneously ruled that the ultrasound was not a search under the Fourth Amendment, we vacate the order dismissing the complaint and remand for further proceedings," the judges wrote in their ruling.
