CAMPUS COURTS In Court: The Rise In Judicial Involvement In Campus Sexual Misconduct Adjudications
The U.S. Department of Education’s 2011 reinterpretation of Title IX, combined with the efforts of activist students, faculty, and administrators, pressured universities to adopt procedures that all but ensured schools would find more accused students responsible in campus sexual misconduct cases. Tentatively at first, and more aggressively in the past several years, courts have ruled against universities in lawsuits filed by accused students. Judges have expressed concerns about colleges failing to respect the due process or procedural fairness rights of their students, discriminating against accused students in violation of Title IX, and failing to adhere to their own contractual obligations.
Since the 2011 policy change, more than 500 accused students
have filed lawsuits against their college or university, a wave of litigation that has continued even after the Department of Education rescinded the 2011 guidance in 2017. More than 340 of those lawsuits have been brought in federal court; colleges have been on the losing end of more than 90 federal decisions, with more than 70 additional lawsuits settled by the school prior to any decision. While change is on the horizon in the form of proposed new Title IX regulations issued by the Department of Education, this rapidly evolving body of law is transforming the relationship between higher education and the judiciary in ways that have implications far beyond the particular issue of campus sexual misconduct.
FIRE is proud to announce that Samantha Harris and Brooklyn College Professor KC Johnson have published a new legal scholarship surveying the impact of this litigation in the latest issue of the New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy.
Campus Court in Court-KC Johnson and Samantha Harris thefire.org/campus-courts-in-court
