Texas Tech ordered to reinstate student expelled for newspaper column
By The Associated Press
07.02.02
LUBBOCK, Texas — A Lubbock judge has ordered Texas Tech University to reinstate a medical school student expelled after he wrote a school newspaper column describing an autopsy.
Sandeep Rao, 23, sued the school in May for violation of his First Amendment right of freedom of speech. He also will be able to make up exams he was not allowed to take in May, a month after his expulsion.
Rao, a former opinions editor at the University Daily, said he wrote the Jan. 24 column to share his experience of the autopsy and to compare it to others he's had as a medical student.
Medical school officials said Rao violated a confidentiality agreement he signed before the autopsy which barred him from divulging the person's name, nature of diagnosis and other details.
State District Judge Mackey Hancock granted Rao's motion for a temporary restraining order June 27.
"In this country, in this state, even students have a right to free speech," said Rao's Houston attorney Andrew Golub. "The university and school officials ... are constitutionally prohibited from using their state power to retaliate against and intimidate people like Mr. Rao."
Dr. Richard Homan, dean of Tech's health sciences center's School of Medicine and graduate school of biomedical sciences, was out of town and could not be reached for comment yesterday.
The Texas attorney general's office will represent the university, said Jane Shepperd, spokeswoman for the office.
"We have received the order, and we expect the university to abide by it," she said. "We will be exploring legal alternatives with our client."
Rao could not be reached for comment yesterday.
In May, Rao said he regretted having written the column. He also said, "I feel like I did what every other student in my medical school class had done. What I had done in writing, many had done verbally. I thought it was within the bounds of the confidentiality statement."
Rao's column prompted Dr. Jerry D. Spencer, Lubbock County's medical examiner and director of the Division of Forensic Pathology at the university's health sciences center, to write a complaint letter to the newspaper.
Spencer claimed Rao "exercised extremely poor judgment in ignoring the admonition for confidentiality and publishing this article. ... His behavior is more than reprehensible. It raises serious ethical concerns about his suitability as a physician."
The case is scheduled for trial in July 2003.
Rao, who will begin his third-year clinical rounds July 8, has three exams remaining, Golub said.
If Rao needs to travel to Lubbock to take the tests, Tech must also pay all of his expenses, according to the court order.
Rao also will be allowed to complete course work he missed because of disciplinary hearings he was required to attend in the months leading up to his expulsion.