By Hannah Albarazi

Law360 (May 5, 2020, 10:00 PM EDT ) Pointing to the University of Southern California's $19 million CARES Act payout and $6 billion endowment, a student hit the university with a putative class action in California federal court Tuesday, alleging it unlawfully held on to tuition and meal plan fees while failing to provide quality education and campus services.

Lead plaintiff Latisha Watson, a graduate student studying social work, sued USC and its board of trustees, seeking to recover tuition and fees for the Spring 2020 session after the university moved classes online during the novel coronavirus pandemic. The suit alleges that USC is engaging in the "illegal, inequitable, and unfair retention of the funds paid" by students.

Watson says USC is "profiting from the current crisis, asking students and their families, many of whom have borne the brunt of the pandemic themselves, been laid off, or who are ill or suffering from financial setbacks, to shoulder additional financial burden."

Watson wants the school to refund a pro-rated portion of her tuition and fees after the university stopped providing promised services to students in mid-March as shelter-in-place orders went into effect.

USC Provost Charles Zukoski sent a campus-wide email on April 28 announcing that the university would not be offering students any prorated tuition refunds for the Spring 2020 semester nor for the upcoming Summer 2020 session, Watson says in her complaint.

Zukoski did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a university spokesperson said Tuesday that "USC is aware of the lawsuit."

The university website states that it has provided pro-rated reimbursement of room and meal plan payments to all students who vacated university housing.

But Watson, who lives off-campus but has a campus meal plan, says she has neither received nor been offered any refund for the unused portion of her mandatory meal plan.

In her suit, Watson points to the government funding USC received through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act, noting that at least half of those funds are federally mandated to go toward students in need of emergency financial assistance.

"Despite receiving this influx of federal funds, defendants refuse to refund or reimburse plaintiff and similarly-situated USC students the fees they paid for the education and other services they are not being provided, including fees for mandatory meal plans that were intended to pay for dining services that are no longer available," Watson says in her complaint.

USC isn't the only university under fire from students seeking reimbursements.

Students at University of California and California State University schools have also lodged a pair of proposed class actions that look to represent a combined 700,000 total students. Those students say the universities should have refunded prorated portions of their campus fees, particularly in light of the UC system's $21 billion endowment and CSU system's $2 billion endowment.

Ivy League students have hit Columbia and Cornell universities with lawsuits too, adding to the growing list of students seeking refunds from their institutions in the wake of coronavirus-spurred campus closures.

Similar putative class actions have come from students at Pace University and Fordham University in New York, Michigan State University, the University of Miami, Drexel University in Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, among others.

USC, one of the nation's most expensive schools with an endowment of $6 billion, has faced a wave of controversy over the last few years. The school has been embroiled in the Varsity Blues scandal and has been accused of failing to protect potentially thousands of women for decades from alleged sexual abuse by former USC gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall.

Watson says in her suit that what USC is doing to students during the pandemic is wrong.

"We believe that USC's refusal to refund students' tuition and fees during this crisis is unconscionable," counsel for USC students, Benjamin Galdston of Berger Montague, said in a statement Tuesday.

"USC is one of the nation's most expensive private universities with a $6 billion endowment and flush with nearly $20 million in taxpayer-funded relief. Having failed to provide what it promised students, USC cannot keep their money," Gladston said.

Watson's suit alleges breach of contract, restitution based on quasi contract, conversion and unfair business practices.

"If they are going to offer something of far less value they should charge accordingly," Galdston told Law360.

A USC spokesperson said the university and its faculty "pivoted immediately to deliver quality instruction in an online format when the entire world was impacted by COVID-19. Faculty and staff have worked tirelessly to connect with students to ensure that academic work continues on track and that progress toward the completion of a USC degree continues."

The university says it has maintained its academic standards during the transition to online learning.

Watson is represented by Benjamin Galdston of Berger Montague.

Counsel information for the University of Southern California could not immediately be determined Tuesday.

The case is Watson v. The University of Southern California, et al., case number 2:20-cv-04107, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

--Editing by Emily Kokoll.

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