Lincoln University Settled Its Spring 2020 Tuition Case for $169,500 — $100 a Student on Paper, About $52.84 After Lawyers and Costs, or 1.3% of a $4,000 Semester. It Is the Pennsylvania School, the 1,695 Automatic Payments Were Due, by Our Count, Around December 19, 2025, and the Settlement Website Still Calls the Deal “Proposed.”

Several schools carry the Lincoln name, so start here: the Lincoln University settlement covers only Lincoln University whose principal campus is in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The complaint says so in paragraph 17 — “Defendant’s principal campus is located in Chester County, Pennsylvania” — and describes a school of about 2,000 undergraduates that receives state appropriations in exchange for discounted in-state tuition but is, in the complaint’s words, “a separate legal entity” “governed by a Board of Trustees.” The case was filed in federal court in Philadelphia, and the agreement is governed by Pennsylvania law. If you attended a different school with Lincoln in its name, this settlement does not cover you. Nor is this the Lincoln Tech case: Gaviria v. Lincoln Educational Services Corporation, No. 2:20-cv-18552, a separate COVID refund suit filed in New Jersey on December 9, 2020 for students of Lincoln Technical Institute and Lincoln College of Technology. This settlement pays nobody from that school.

The Lincoln University class action lawsuit was filed on March 11, 2024 by Benita Dixon, an undergraduate in Spring 2020. Her complaint says the semester was scheduled to run from about January 6 to April 18, 2020, that she lost campus access after March 15, 2020, and that students paid for an in-person experience — library, labs, recreation, activities — that ended when Lincoln went remote. The judge summarized the claim: students “paid tuition and fees to Lincoln in exchange for an in-person, on-campus educational experience,” but Lincoln, following government mandates, “closed campus services and facilities on March 12, 2020 and offered only remote learning for the remainder of the semester.” The legal theories were breach of an implied contract and unjust enrichment.

Lincoln’s position, as the settlement website puts it: it “denies all allegations, maintains that it transitioned to remote learning to protect the health and safety of its students, faculty, and staff in compliance with mandatory governmental shutdown orders, and settled this lawsuit to avoid further litigation. There has been no finding of liability in any court.”

Decided, and finished in court: on September 18, 2025 Judge Marston granted final approval, certified the class, approved fees, and ordered: “This matter is DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE, but the Court will maintain jurisdiction over the enforcement of the settlement.” Nobody objected, and the notice warned that a class member who does not object “cannot appeal that approval order”; the public docket copies we could see show no filing after that day. Not confirmed: whether the money has been paid. That is the open question of this Lincoln University COVID settlement, and section four explains what the documents say should have happened.

The final approval order certifies this class, word for word: “All Lincoln University students enrolled in the Spring 2020 Semester for at least one in-person class who did not withdraw by March 12, 2020 for whom any amount of tuition or fees was paid to Lincoln from any source other than a scholarship, grant, or tuition remission from Lincoln, and whose tuition and/or fees have not been fully refunded.” Excluded are students with full scholarships or tuition remission from Lincoln, Lincoln’s officers and trustees and their families, and anyone who opted out. Note two details: tuition paid by the student, by family or with student loans counts; scholarships, grants or tuition remission from Lincoln do not. And the class is broader than the complaint’s, which covered undergraduates only.

Nobody had to prove anything. Lincoln gave the administrator, RG/2 Claims Administration, the names and last known email and postal addresses of every class member — 1,695 people. According to the judge’s opinion, RG/2 emailed the short notice to 1,470 of them on June 26, 2025 and mailed it to the 225 without a valid email; all but 8 were reached, a rate of 99.53%. Nobody opted out and nobody objected by the August 10, 2025 deadline. By the time of the final hearing, class counsel said RG/2 had received more than 250 election forms. No class member attended the hearing on September 15, 2025.

The settlement agreement makes payment automatic: each class member’s share “will be distributed to that Settlement Class Member automatically, with no action required by that Settlement Class Member.” By default it is a check “mailed to the Settlement Class Member’s last known permanent mailing address on file with Lincoln’s Registrar.” The only form was an optional Election Form, reached with the Class ID and PIN from the notice, to give a new address or choose Venmo or PayPal instead of a check. It had to be submitted “no later than forty-five (45) days after the Effective Date.” The paper form asks for the Class Member ID, name, address, email, the Venmo or PayPal email or phone number, and a signature under penalty of perjury — no Social Security number and no fee. A message asking you to pay something to release a Lincoln settlement payment is not part of this process.

What class members gave up is broad: all claims arising from tuition or mandatory fees for Spring 2020, from the lawsuit, or from Lincoln’s transition to remote education during the pandemic, known or unknown, against Lincoln and its trustees, officers, employees and others. Because nobody opted out, that release binds all 1,695.

Divide the fund by the class and you get the figure the plaintiff’s own preliminary approval brief used: “the gross per student recovery is $100.” Everything else comes out first. The agreement splits what is left equally, so a student who paid out-of-state tuition gets the same as one who paid in-state rates.

The judge wrote that the final amount “will be around $52.84, but the actual recovery may be slightly less due to taxes.” Our arithmetic from the same figures gives about $52.73 — 11 cents less; the opinion does not show its calculation. Either way, the checks were never going to be large.

Measured against what students paid, the judge put it at 1.32% of tuition, because Lincoln’s Spring 2020 tuition was “only $4,000.” The complaint is more precise: in-state undergraduate tuition was $4,013 and out-of-state $6,698, plus fees of $1,513 for in-state students and $1,929 for out-of-state students by our addition of the five fees it lists. The court compared the result with other COVID tuition settlements: Saint Joseph’s University, in the same court, where students got $277, or 1.20% of a $23,175 semester, and Loyola University of Chicago, with $88 per student. At the preliminary hearing, the opinion says, “the parties mentioned that Lincoln has had some recent financial struggles,” and confirmed at the final hearing that its situation was similar — one reason the judge found the amount reasonable.

The lawyers took less than they billed. Lynch Carpenter and Leeds Brown Law reported 215.6 hours worth $142,665 at their rates; the $56,494.35 fee is, in the court’s words, “a negative multiplier of roughly 0.39.” The judge did cut one item: the service award for the named plaintiff, from the $2,500 requested to $750, because the case settled early, she was not deposed and she did not attend the hearings.

The agreement ties everything to the Effective Date: the first date after the final judgment “becomes Final,” which, if no appeal is taken, means “the expiration of the time to file a notice of appeal.” In a federal civil case that is 30 days. Counting from the September 18, 2025 judgment, day 30 fell on Saturday, October 18, so by our count the window closed on Monday, October 20, 2025. From there:

The latest payment date the agreement sets is therefore about December 19, 2025, by our count. What we could not find is any public confirmation that it happened. The settlement website’s home page is unchanged since at least July 29, 2025, when the Internet Archive saved a copy: it still describes a “proposed settlement,” a final hearing “currently scheduled for September 15, 2025,” and promises that the Effective Date “will also be posted on this website when it is known.” It never was. The court documents page did add the final approval opinion and order. The copies of the docket at CourtListener and PacerMonitor end with the September 18, 2025 order. Aggregators are no help: ClaimDepot’s page, updated August 27, 2026, still lists the case as “Preliminarily Approved.” We found no public report from a student of a check arriving or not arriving. None of that proves the checks were not sent; it means the question can only be answered by the administrator.

One consequence matters if you never saw the money. The agreement treats a check as uncashed 180 days after the distribution, and a Venmo or PayPal payment that is not received within 180 days as unsuccessful; that money is to go back to Lincoln for a financial aid fund for its students, subject to court approval. If you moved after Spring 2020 and did not send an address update, the agreement’s default was the permanent address the Registrar had on file.

The docket shows a short but contested case. Lincoln moved to dismiss in June 2024; the judge denied the motion on September 10, 2024. On December 23, 2024 the plaintiff moved to compel Lincoln’s answers to interrogatories and deposition dates. The court granted it the next day and ordered Lincoln to provide, by January 3, 2025, dates on which its president, Brenda A. Allen, Ph.D., and Patricia A. Joseph, Ph.D., were available for depositions; an amended order of December 26 said the court would award the plaintiff attorneys’ fees for the motion and required Lincoln’s president and general counsel to appear at an in-person status conference. That conference was cancelled. On January 7, 2025 the parties met for a settlement conference with Magistrate Judge Carol Sandra Moore Wells and reached a settlement in principle. The agreement is dated March 24, 2025; preliminary approval followed on May 12, 2025 and final approval on September 18, 2025.

If you were a Lincoln student in Spring 2020 and got nothing, contact the administrator. The notice asks class members not to contact the court or Lincoln about the settlement.

• Administrator: Dixon v. Lincoln University Settlement, c/o RG/2 Claims Administration LLC, P.O. Box 59479, Philadelphia, PA 19102-9479 — toll-free (866) 742-4955 — info@rg2claims.com
• Website: LincolnCovidSettlement.com (court documents, notice and the election form)
• Class counsel: Nicholas A. Colella, Lynch Carpenter, LLP, Pittsburgh, (412) 322-9243; Anthony M. Alesandro, Leeds Brown Law, P.C., Carle Place, New York, (516) 873-9550

Useful to have ready: your name as it was at Lincoln in 2020, the address the Registrar would have had, and the Class Member ID from the June 2025 email or letter if you still have it. Things to ask: whether a payment was issued to you, on what date, by which method, and whether it was cashed; and, if it was never cashed, whether it can be reissued before any leftover money goes back to Lincoln.

There is nothing left to file: the opt-out and objection deadline was August 10, 2025, the election window closed by our count on December 4, 2025, and the case is closed. Because nobody opted out, no class member kept a separate claim over the Spring 2020 switch to remote learning.