Hearing officers are required to follow the law; thus, hearing officers, including student discipline hearing officers, are required to know the law. The law that student discipline hearing officers must know is not limited to the law of their school district and state. Each year, thousands of appeals of student discipline determinations make their way before federal judges. The legal doctrines of claim preclusion (res judicata) and issue preclusion (collateral estoppel) require student discipline hearing officers to follow the rulings of federal judges as those ruling relate to the issues that come before them in hearings. While you may think the case you heard yesterday was a “case-of-first impression,” because you had never had a case like it before, the very issues before you may have already been decided by higher courts. If you keep abreast of recent federal appellate cases, this prevents you from inadvertently and needlessly relitigating questions have been previously determined by a federal court. This session will review the most recent public education cases from federal courts with special emphasis on student discipline.