Michigan State trustee alleges discrimination, retaliation by university officials in new lawsuit

A Michigan State University trustee is suing university officials, including current and former trustees, alleging she experienced gender and racial bias over the last few years.

The lawsuit on behalf of Trustee Rema Vassar was filed on Oct. 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Vassar was elected to the board in November 2020 for an eight-year term, becoming the first Black woman to serve as chair in 2023.

The lawsuit alleges that officials forced Vassar out of her chairmanship, stripped her of leadership roles, and put her under investigation after she demanded transparency, raised concerns from Black students about racial hostility, and challenged people in power. 

"No trustee in the University's history, of any race or sex, has been subjected to the combination of measures Defendants deployed against Dr. Vassar, and the white trustees whose comparable or worse conduct is described below were subjected to none of them," read the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that certain trustees wanted to change board rules immediately after Vassar was elected chair to "eliminate permanent elections in favor of a revolving chair system and sought to cut short Dr. Vassar's customary two-year term mid-stream."

"Michigan voters elected Dr. Vassar to ask hard questions and exercise independent judgment," attorney Jonathan Marko said in a statement. "Our lawsuit alleges that university officials punished her for doing exactly that. An elected trustee's job is to serve the public. It is not to protect powerful people from uncomfortable questions."

Attempts to reach Marko on Thursday for additional comment went unanswered.

MSU spokesperson Amber McCann says the university "is prepared to address the claims through appropriate legal channels."

According to the lawsuit, Vassar has publicly objected when the then-chair removed a voter-suppression resolution from a meeting agenda in 2022, called for accountability following the February 2023 campus shooting, and pushed for the release of 6,000 withheld documents related to the Larry Nassar investigation.

The lawsuit alleges that Vassar was targeted by Freedom of Information Act requests regarding her finances and accused of leaking information about the investigation into former football coach Mel Tucker. But the Jones Day law firm concluded that Vassar was not involved in the leak, according to the lawsuit.

In October 2023, Vassar was accused in a letter penned by trustee Brianna Scott of bullying and interfering with university investigations. Scott sent the letter to the board and shared it with MSU's student-run newspaper, The State News.  

At the time, Vassar denied those allegations. The lawsuit claims that several individuals called for her resignation and referred her to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for removal.

"The timing uniformity of the reaction reflected a coordinated pressure campaign," read the lawsuit. "No comparable campaign has ever been directed at a white trustee of the University over governance disputes."

The lawsuit claims that, days later, the university spent more than half a million dollars to retain Miller & Chevalier to investigate Vassar and Trustee Dennis Denno. Vassar cooperated with the investigation and sat for interviews on multiple days in early 2024. However, investigators allegedly refused to disclose the scope of the investigation, forbade any recording or transcript, and refused to provide the search terms for demanding to examine Vassar's personal cellphone, according to the lawsuit.

Miller & Chevalier released its 66-page independent review in February 2024, concluding that Vassar and Denno both encouraged students to "embarrass and unsettle" interim President Teresa Woodruff. It also found that Vassar violated the board's policy by taking a ride on a donor's private jet.  

However, the report did not find that Vassar inappropriately suggested Security Risk Management Consultants revise its findings in the 2023 shooting.

The report also found that Scott violated the code of ethics by publicly releasing her letter to The State News. The report recommended referring Vassar and Denno to the governor's office and censures.

The lawsuit claims that MSU's general counsel caused the report to be released publicly before the board could vote on it.

Vassar resigned from her chairmanship in March 2024, which the lawsuit alleges was not voluntary and was due to "the intolerable conditions Defendants had created, including rushed public release of the report, the pre-circulated removal resolution, and the coordinated campaign that preceded them." 

Vassar, Denno and Scott were censured in 2024 following the investigation.

At the time of her resignation, Vassar said, "I believe these actions are punitive and over the top. I'm proud of my service on this board, of the work that this board has done, and I've been honored to serve as chair ... This report acknowledges what we all know, that this board has suffered from dysfunction for some time, certainly preceding my tenure." 

Whitmer declines to remove Denno and Vassar from the board. Vassar's term ends in January 2029.

In June 2026, she was censured again, along with Trustee Mike Blow, after voting against a revision to the board's code of ethics. The new code of conduct bars trustees from publicly dissenting from decisions made by the board majority. It passed by a 5-3 vote.