2019 IN REVIEW in Accused Student Litigation
In an environment where accused students too often need to go to court to undo unfair Title IX adjudications, lawsuits against universities continued apace in 2019. A critical ruling in the Seventh Circuit highlighted the year, but some troubling rulings elsewhere provided a reminder that in this area of the law, an unsympathetic judge can be enough to ensure a bad outcome…First, the statistics. For the year, there were 78 new federal lawsuits filed by accused students, a rate essentially unchanged from 2018 (77 federal lawsuits filed) and 2017 (78 federal lawsuits filed). Both the state and federal level produced decisions in 96 cases—43 of which were university setbacks. Universities prevailed in 46 cases, while seven yielded mixed or neutral decisions.
The most significant ruling came in June, from the Seventh Circuit. Other 2019 significant victories for accused students came at the district court level, where the court denied summary judgment for the university, greenlighting the case to trial. (In each of these cases, the university then settled.) At the same time, the year featured some troubling results. Despite seemingly strong complaints, accused students lost in lawsuits against Arkansas and Oberlin (both cases have been appealed). The Occidental case, in which the accused student was found guilty despite text messages from the accuser indicating her consent, came to an end with a horrific ruling from a California appeals court. And Appeals Court decisions from the First Circuit (BC) and Seventh Circuit (Columbia College) wound up being quite narrowly written but nonetheless seemed to have an intent to narrow earlier circuit rulings for accused students.
In 2020, we await issuance of the DeVos Title IX regulations, which seek to create a more level playing field in Title IX adjudications.
mindingthecampus.org-KC Johnson
