CALIFORNIA COURT OF APPEAL Finds That USC Denied Accused Student A Fair Hearing
This is a great win for John Doe!
The California Court of Appeal issued an opinion today finding that the University of Southern California (“USC”) failed to provide a fair hearing in a Title IX sexual misconduct investigation and final decision by USC’s Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Ainsley Carry in November 2014. The Court of Appeal ordered the trial court judge, Hon. Joanne B. O’Donnell, to set aside her February 2016 decision denying the accused USC student’s writ of mandate and also awarded John Doe his costs on appeal. READ Appellate Judges Opinion Doe v USC
In May 2014, USC suspended John Doe from the university and evicted him from campus housing the same day without any hearing. Over the next several months the alleged sexual misconduct was investigated first by Marilou Mirkovich, an attorney hired by USC, and later by USC Title IX investigator Dr. Kegan Allee, who served as the investigator and also the adjudicator under USC’s administrative policy. (In December 2013, attorney Marilou Mirkovich was engaged by Occidental College to serve as an adjudicator in another Title IX case that is also pending at the Court of Appeal, Doe v. Occidental College, B284707. ) Dr. Kegan Allee ultimately found by a preponderance of the evidence that John Doe knew or should have known Jane Roe was too drunk to consent to sexual activity. John Doe appealed Dr. Allee’s decision to USC’s anonymous Student Behavior Appeals Panel, however, the USC Appeals Panel agreed with Dr. Allee and recommended his immediate expulsion. On November 12, 2014 Dr. Ainsley Carry informed John Doe that he had approved the Appeals Panel decision, which became final.
In November 2014, John Doe challenged USC’s Title IX action to the California Superior Court in a writ of mandate and sought an order to stay his expulsion from USC so that he could continue his undergraduate education elsewhere, if not at USC. On November 19, 2014, Superior Court Judge Joanne B. O’Donnell denied John Doe’s request for a stay of the administrative expulsion decision, stating that John Doe failed to show “that the notation of expulsion on his transcript will cause him irreparable harm between now and the hearing on his petition.” Over a year later on February 29, 2016, Judge O’Donnell denied John Doe’s writ petition, which the Court of Appeal has now remanded and ordered the trial court to grant. Due to his expulsion from USC, which John Doe was required to disclose to possible transfer schools, John Doe has been unable to gain admittance to another four-year institution to continue his education. Now that the findings and sanctions from the unfair USC Title IX process have been reversed, John Doe should be able to continue his education.
Today’s decision builds on recent California Appellate rulings that help define the scope of fairness and due process protections that colleges and universities must provide to accused students in sexual misconduct proceedings. Mark Hathaway also assisted the accused students at the campus proceedings or trial court in the following published cases: John Doe v. Regents (“UC Santa Barbara”) (2018) 28 Cal.App.5th 44, John Doe v. Claremont McKenna College (2018) 25 Cal.App.5th 1055, and John Doe v. Regents (“UC San Diego”) (2016) 5 Cal.App.5th 1055.
SOS sends a Big Huge Congratulations to John Doe, his family, and to Doe’s attorney’s Mark Hathaway and Jenna Parker. It is due to the perseverance and strength of the few John Doe’s who can mentally and financially endure the college’s persecutions, that these court-ordered due process wins are finally being afforded to Title IX falsey accused students. And of course, a big thank you to the attorneys who are the legal minds in this endeavor..fighting against the goliath college’s counsel who come with endowment funds.
-Alice
