Student’s Challenge to Scholarship Criteria Waived on Appeal, Court Lacked Jurisdiction
The Ohio Court of Appeals, Tenth Appellate District, affirmed Tuesday the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a student against The Ohio State University (OSU) over a denied scholarship. The court’s ruling, issued on September 9, 2025, determined that the student, Reese C. Dehen, had waived her right to challenge trial court orders and that OSU was protected by discretionary immunity.
The case began when Dehen, a prospective member of OSU’s women’s swim team, was not awarded a National Buckeye Merit Scholarship (NBMS). She subsequently sued the university, alleging fraud, negligence, and other claims. During the trial, a magistrate denied several of Dehen’s motions to compel discovery from OSU.
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On appeal, the court highlighted a critical procedural misstep: Dehen never filed a motion to set aside the magistrate’s orders in the trial court. This failure, according to Ohio law, meant she had waived her right to challenge those specific orders on appeal. The court cited precedent from multiple Ohio appellate districts to support this finding, effectively dismissing the discovery-related part of her appeal.
Discretionary Immunity Protects OSU’s Policy Decisions
The core of the appellate court’s decision rested on the legal doctrine of discretionary immunity. This principle protects state entities, like OSU, from lawsuits over certain functions that involve a high degree of official judgment or discretion, such as making fundamental policy decisions.
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Dehen’s lawsuit centered on her belief that OSU did not give “full consideration” to her scholarship application, which she submitted without a standardized test score. The university had waived the test-score requirement for the 2021 incoming class due to the COVID-19 pandemic and instead used a proxy score system for those applicants.
The court’s opinion, authored by Judge Julia L. Dorrian, found that the creation of the scholarship criteria—including the proxy score system—was a basic policy decision and therefore protected by discretionary immunity. Dehen’s argument that OSU improperly applied its criteria was, in the court’s view, a disagreement with the policy itself, not a challenge to its improper execution.
Dehen’s lawsuit was also weakened by the fact that the scholarship was explicitly described on OSU’s website as “competitive and not guaranteed,” and that “criteria are subject to change without notice.”
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Lack of Jurisdiction
Because the court found that Dehen’s claims fell within the scope of OSU’s discretionary immunity, it concluded that the Court of Claims, where the case was originally heard, lacked jurisdiction to consider the claims. This jurisdictional issue, which trumps the merits of the case, led the appellate court to affirm the trial court’s decision to grant summary judgment to OSU and dismiss Dehen’s lawsuit.
The ruling underscores the significant legal protection afforded to public universities and other state entities when their actions are characterized as high-level policy decisions.
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