## Facts

- Christopher Marlor was a student at Mooresville High School and was one of two students known for frequently wearing all-black clothing.
- During lunch, a student approached another student and made death threats.
- The threatened student reported the incident to Assistant Principal Bruce Peters but stated he did not know the identity of the threatening student.
- Peters provided the threatened student with the prior year’s school yearbook to help identify the alleged threat-maker.
- The threatened student selected Marlor’s photograph from the yearbook; since the photograph was taken, Marlor had grown facial hair.
- Later that same day, a second student reported being threatened by a student the second student did not know.
- Peters again provided the prior year’s yearbook, and the second student also identified Marlor from the photograph.
- The school imposed a short suspension on Marlor and scheduled an expulsion hearing.
- At the expulsion hearing, the two threatened students submitted written statements asserting that Marlor had threatened them.
- Marlor and his attorney requested the identities of the accusing students; the request was denied.
- A hearing examiner recommended expulsion, and the Mooresville Board of School Trustees affirmed the expulsion decision.
- Marlor filed suit in state court alleging deprivation of procedural due process; the case was removed to federal court.
- The Board filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c).

## Issues

1. Whether the complaint plausibly alleged a procedural due process violation arising from the expulsion process, including reliance on written student statements and the refusal to disclose the accusers’ identities.
2. Whether the Board was entitled to judgment on the pleadings under Rule 12(c) based on the allegations in the pleadings.

## Decision

- After removal, the federal district court addressed the Board’s Rule 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings challenging the legal sufficiency of the due process claim.
- The available case summary identifies the motion and the due process theory but does not provide the opinion’s reported disposition or specific holdings.

## Legal Principles

- A Rule 12(c) motion tests the sufficiency of the pleadings; when evaluating it, a court accepts well-pleaded factual allegations as true and determines whether the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
- Student suspensions and expulsions from a public school can trigger procedural due process protections under the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The amount of process required in the school-discipline setting depends on the seriousness of the deprivation; longer exclusions typically require more formal procedures than brief suspensions.
- Procedural due process commonly centers on notice of the charges and a meaningful opportunity to respond before an impartial decisionmaker.
- In school discipline matters, courts may consider whether limits on confrontation or cross-examination (including nondisclosure of student accusers’ identities) still allow a fair chance to contest the allegations, balancing the student’s interests against school safety and administrative concerns.

## Conclusion

Rippy v. Board of School Trustees involves a student’s procedural due process challenge to an expulsion decision based on two yearbook identifications and written student accusations, where the school withheld the accusers’ identities; after removal to federal court, the Board sought judgment on the pleadings under Rule 12(c), though the publicly available summary does not report the court’s ultimate ruling.


Rippy v. Board of School Trustees, 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7427 (2000)