A judge has dismissed a lawsuit by former Jackson State University President William Bynum Jr. against the university and the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, ending a six-year legal battle.
Bynum, who was JSU president from July 2017 to February 2020, sued the university and IHL in Hinds County Circuit Court alleging that the state’s college board violated his contract after he resigned. Bynum resigned after he was arrested in a prostitution sting.
Bynum remained on staff at Jackson State as a professor until April 2020. A month after he filed the lawsuit, university leaders fired him. In the lawsuit, IHL and JSU countered that Bynum’s contract never granted him tenure at the university.
Credit: Mississippi Public UniversitiesBynum argued in the lawsuit that through a clause in his contract, he could resign or be fired as president but remain employed at the university as a full professor.
Senior Status Judge James D. Bell noted in his decision that the IHL Board of Trustees’ policies stipulate that after completing five years of service, a college president could be granted tenure as a professor at the board’s discretion.
But Bell ruled, Bynum did not serve five years as JSU president and did not qualify for tenure.
Nothing in the contract gave Bynum a right to tenure, Bell wrote. “Upon his resignation, he became an at-will employee. The entire premise of his Complaint is based upon a misreading or misunderstanding of the plain words of his contract.”
Bell also dismissed Bynum’s complaint that he was entitled to punitive damages because IHL’s and JSU’s actions were “‘fraudulent, egregious, in bad faith and in total disregard for’ his actions.”
Charles Winfield, an attorney who represents Jackson State and IHL, and Bynum’s lawyer, Dennis Sweet III, did not respond to a request for comment.
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