Whether you believe Donald Trump is a victim of lawfare or fear that his appointees will engage in it, one thing is clear: Americans are losing faith in our institutions to deliver justice, and for good reason. Law is no longer just a tool for ensuring fairness; it has become a weapon for those in power to silence critics, drain resources, and grind opponents into submission.
Nowhere is this more evident than in higher education, where administrators have learned to manipulate legal and bureaucratic processes to destroy dissent without accountability. One of their most effective tools is administrative law courts, a little-known legal backchannel that allows colleges and universities to sidestep the due process of traditional courts while financially strangling undesirable faculty.
As a survivor of such lawfare, I saw these tactics firsthand.
In 2021, I filed a First Amendment suit against Kern Community College District (KCCD) administrators. The district retaliated with termination proceedings, a strategy that their attorney detailed in a recently published piece recommending colleges and universities defeat First Amendment claims by initiating dismissal proceedings.
As such, I had a front-row seat to the legal maneuvering used to silence dissent. If nothing else, I hope my reflections shed light on how the system is abused and helps faculty navigate through the administrative stratagem.
The Administrative Law Trap
Most people broadly understand criminal and civil courts but are unaware of their lesser-known awkward cousin: the administrative court.
Typically tasked with licensing and intergovernmental disputes, California’s courts also serve as the final arbiter in dismissing tenured professors. Once intended as a safeguard for faculty, they have become a bureaucratic shield and sword for college administrators, allowing them to sidestep traditional legal scrutiny while striking with an array of tactics unavailable in a typical courtroom.
Administrative courts operate under different rules that overwhelmingly favor colleges and provide faux due process. Discovery is severely limited, hearsay is admissible, and the financial cost of the entire process frequently exceeds the target’s annual salary even as their salary is suspended. Despite these disadvantages, failing to exercise this right to this kangaroo court can be an abdication of due process, restricting future legal recourse for wrongful termination.
Yet participation means legitimizing a process rigged against faculty, where the outcome is binding and often precludes the opportunity to seek justice in a proper court.
Discovery as a Weapon
One of the most glaring problems with administrative courts is the lack of meaningful discovery.
In civil or criminal trials, discovery lasts months or even years, allowing both sides to examine evidence and build a case. In administrative courts, discovery may be restricted to mere weeks, giving faculty almost no time to prepare a defense.
Meanwhile, colleges and universities have already spent months or years investigating and building their case. They control nearly all the relevant documents, allowing them to selectively present evidence—or even fabricate records—to fit their narrative. In contrast, faculty are left groping in the dark, forced to disprove claims without access to key records they may not even know exist.
I experienced this myself when KCCD advanced a suspicious contract for a partisan guest speaker. I had criticized the use of public funds for the lecture. In the hearing, the district attorney asked if I had seen the event contract, and when I indicated I had not, the district produced a contract showing private funding, presumably in an effort to affirm the district’s stated allegation of “dishonesty.”
Fortunately, a well-placed friend quickly provided me with the original contract, which we admitted to court the following day. It confirmed the event was to be paid for by the National Endowment for the Humanities grant funds at the time of my criticism. The district had manufactured a post-facto contract and attempted to mislead the court.
In another instance, I revealed two conflicting versions of the same diversity committee resolution. The original, drafted after I obtained equivalency to teach ethnic studies, explicitly called on the KCCD Board of Trustees to “reject recommendations and approvals of all ethnic studies equivalency approvals.” When I filed a complaint and record request to obtain what I believed to be a racially discriminatory demand, the college replaced the file with a benign resolution advocating for ethnic studies in general—a document the committee never saw but which the college dishonestly advanced to obscure its original and potentially discriminatory document.
Trial by Rumor
The lack of proper discovery enables altered documents and fosters hearsay and false testimony.
In civil or criminal trials, depositions lock down testimony, but faculty facing termination can rarely afford the steep costs, especially during a suspended salary. In my case, the district listed dozens of witnesses, some I had never met, making depositions financially impossible. With no choice but to forgo them, faculty enter the courtroom blind to the accusations they must refute in real time without notice—allegations that, if unchallenged, become part of the official record.
In my case, several administrators suddenly referenced complaints they allegedly heard about but which were not documented in anything but their vague memories. At another point, one staff member testified that another staff member had told her I disrupted a meeting. Neither of the two staff members had attended the meeting that I supposedly disrupted, and as a surprise twist, neither had I.
The administrative hearing process is also ripe for fictitious testimony.
Sworn “under penalty of perjury,” my college president and Dean of Instruction falsely alleged that I had equated the campus to Nazi Germany during a radio interview. An audio recording and transcript easily debunked the claim they doubtfully expected to surface. Similarly, when another staff member claimed I had repeatedly belittled employees in committee meetings, I offered up recordings of those meetings that proved her sworn statement false. Over weeks of mind-numbing false testimony, I documented dozens of untrue allegations that had to be challenged before entering “the record.”
Maliciously curated testimonies can shape the official record unless the accused faculty member produces more convincing proof to refute them. This is particularly difficult when the district can summon new allegations of hearsay and align witnesses through lawful client preparation.
All of this effectively reverses the due process standard of “innocent until proven guilty,” shifting the burden of evidence onto the accused. Without trustworthy witnesses or key documents—all of which I was uniquely fortunate to have—faculty stand little chance.
[RELATED: How the Modern Law School Promotes Political Division and ‘Lawfare’]
Financial Strangulation as a Strategy
Even if a professor wins in the administrative court, victory often comes at an unbearable cost.
Educational institutions have access to nearly unlimited funds, allowing them to bury opponents in perpetual litigation, even as they suspend the salary of their target. My own legal bills exceeded hundreds of thousands of dollars in two different courts before I settled under the fear that I could no longer finance my defense. This tactic—forcing settlement by financial exhaustion—is not unique to me.
Take the case of my colleague and philosophy professor, Michael Einhaus. He won his administrative case but at a devastating financial cost—he had to sell his home and fell into debt. When KCCD appealed the administrative court ruling, he had no choice but to accept a settlement that forced his resignation. The truth mattered far less than financial endurance.
A more egregious example is unfolding right now in Fresno, where Professor Ed Madec is under siege by the State Center Community College District (SCCCD). Five years ago, the district attempted to fire him—and lost. His district appealed and lost again in June 2023. Ruling on that appeal, Fresno County Superior Court Judge Robert Whalen characterized SCCCD’s targeting of Madec as “embarrassing, if not shameful.”
Though forced to reinstate Madec, SCCCD appealed the ruling again and then fabricated new grounds for an entirely new dismissal case that initiated yet another administrative court hearing while still appealing their original losses. More than just another bout of administrative law, SCCCD used its internal police force to generate allegations of criminal conduct and called for Madec’s arrest—a gross pretext to support another dismissal.
When Madec’s criminal case finally reached Fresno Superior Court last month, Judge Brian Alvarez dismissed it outright, noting that the campus investigation omitted key dissenting witnesses and overall doesn’t pass “the smell-test.”
Judge Alvarez also looked askance at SCCCD’s administrative law legal counsel contacting witnesses on the eve of the criminal trial, which Madec’s attorney characterized as flagrant “witness tampering.” Judge Alvarez suggested the conduct might be “taken up with the State Bar.”
Despite the collapse of their criminal allegations, SCCCD is still pursuing Madec’s administrative termination based on the allegations that the criminal court has already dismissed.
Their goal isn’t justice; it’s expulsion by any means necessary.
The Bottom Line
In the hands of college bureaucrats, due process procedures have been twisted into a weapon of coercion.
Though intended for our defense, the innate flaws of administrative court hearings—limited discovery, admissible hearsay, and unchecked institutional power—make them perfect for silencing dissent. Faculty aren’t defeated by evidence but by financial exhaustion and fraudulent testimony.
If these abuses go unchecked, colleges and universities will continue exploiting the system to eliminate critics, making truth and justice irrelevant afterthoughts. Good faculty won’t fall because they are guilty but because they simply can’t afford to keep fighting.
Image: Justice Lady on Wikimedia Commons
