Court annuls Adelphi University's AI-cheating finding against autistic student flagged by Turnitin
A New York State Supreme Court justice in Nassau County annulled Adelphi University's finding that first-year student Orion Newby used AI to write an essay. Newby, who has been diagnosed with Level 2 autism spectrum disorder, was enrolled in Adelphi's Bridges Program for neurodivergent students. His November 2024 World Civilization essay, written with help from a Bridges tutor, received a zero; his professor's violation report said Turnitin had given it an "AI-generated score of 100%". Newby denied using AI and submitted results from two other detectors, Grammarly's AI detector and ZeroGPT, rating the essay as human-written. Adelphi sanctioned him with a plagiarism workshop on pain of a registration hold, and the same official who issued the finding denied his appeal. On 28 January 2026 Justice Randy Sue Marber found the finding and the denial "without valid basis and devoid of reason": the professor had written to Newby that he expected the integrity office to make its own decision, the university did not consider the student's detector evidence, did not give him an advisor of his choice, and left him no meaningful appeal. The court ordered the record expunged and the sanction rescinded. It did not rule on whether AI was used.
