RANDAZZO 003 - Structural Retaliation via Misrouting: Whistleblower Disclosures, Academic Redirects & Liability in California Higher Ed
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines a recurring institutional pattern: when a student makes an internal whistleblower disclosure—raising concrete compliance concerns rooted in state or federal law—university administrators reframe the disclosure as a purely academic issue and redirect the student to academic personnel (instructors, chairs) instead of the compliance apparatus. We argue this misrouting creates multi‑vector liability. First, academic personnel who are not licensed attorneys cannot provide legal advice and are not trained or authorized to resolve statutory compliance risk. Second, the redirection chills protected disclosures and can constitute retaliation under relevant frameworks (e.g., CA Labor Code §1102.5 for covered student‑employees; institutional whistleblower policies; and, for public institutions, the First Amendment and the Bane Act when coercion/penalty is used). Third, misrouting undermines duty‑to‑preserve and remediation obligations once the institution is on notice, aggravating exposure modeled in Randazzo 001–002. We provide a formal logic model of structural retaliation by misrouting, identify failure modes (UPL, conflict of interest, privacy, spoliation), and propose a compliance‑grade triage architecture. Keywords: whistleblower, retaliation, California Labor Code §1102.5, California Whistleblower Protection Act (Gov. Code §8547 et seq.), First Amendment retaliation (public universities), Bane Act (Civ. Code §52.1), unauthorized practice of law (UPL), compliance triage, due process, FERPA, LMS (Canvas), formal methods
Author: Ellis Wilson
Language: English
Topic: Legal Issues in Education
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7105791053
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