Per KC Johnson’s tweet: 24hrs before preliminary injunction hearing, Austin College due process lawsuit is settled. 32nd fed’l lawsuit on issue settled before any court decision in case. Original complaint reported by Dan Bauman is here: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txed.181698/gov.uscourts.txed.181698.1.0.pdf …)
In March 2018 the lawyer for false rape accuser Nikki Yovino said during a pretrial hearing: “Our defense is that these two young men did things to her that were a sexual assault and were against her will,” “You are going to try these sexual assault allegations?” the judge asked. “We sure are,” Nikki’s lawyer responded. “She had a reasonable belief that she was speaking the truth about what she said occurred.”
Two months later, Yovino is claiming in court that she never told investigators she was sexually assaulted. Yovino, was in a Connecticut court for a hearing on the defense’s motion to keep her alleged confession that she made up the rape allegation out of trial. A prosecutor appeared surprised when the former Sacred Heart University student said she never told police she was sexually assaulted. ..Yovino said two Sacred Heart football players raped her in 2016. The players said the encounter was consensual. Yovino is charged with falsely reporting an incident.
According to Esquire Magazine: in 2013 “a drunk freshman boy (John Doe) met a drunk freshman girl (Jane Roe) in this dorm at Occidental College, and their sexual encounter collided with a panicked and pressured academic bureaucracy.” John and Jane had drunk consenting sex. But Jane accused John, and John was expelled. John then appealed, and Oxy denied his appeal. According to Robert Shibley of FIRE: in 2014 after “Occidental denied his appeal, Doe filed a lawsuit against the college in state court and was granted an Order of Stay pending further legal review.” Shibley stated that “the weakened definition of incapacitation applied by Occidental in Doe’s case is so faulty and unfair that, using the same applied definition and given the same evidence, Doe’s accuser would be guilty of sexually assaulting Doe.” And today, according to Doe’s lawyer, Mark Hathaway: “Appellant challenged Respondent’s decision by filing a petition for writ of administrative mandamus with the California Superior Court. The trial court, however, denied Appellant’s writ petition. Consequently, Appellant respectfully appeals the findings and resulting sanctions and requests this Court to set aside the College’s determination.”
A hearing was held on the motion to dismiss and U.S. District Judge John McConnell didn’t think there was any reason to wait months to issue an order in a reverse-discrimination Title IX case against Johnson & Wales University. So he did it from the bench, right after oral arguments had concluded. The Court denied the motion to dismiss on the critical allegation that the university violated Title IX by discriminating against a man in the disciplinary process. The extraordinarily unusual move means trouble for JWU. The facts alleged are:
- The male and female students had at least six sexual encounters, only two of which were at issue.
- The female did not complain for one year.
- The complaint was instigated by the female’s boyfriend, but the boyfriend could not be cross-examined because he served as the female student’s hearing advisor.
- The accused male student was not given a copy of the complaint, he only had it read to him not long before the hearing.
- The investigator who gathered the facts expressed support for the female student from the start.
- The entire process from complaint to adjudication took only five weeks.
- There was a short time to appeal, during which time the male student retained counsel, but the university would not provide the attorney with a copy of the complaint.
- There was no record of the adjudication, making internal appeal and court challenge difficult
There is no transcript of the judge’s ruling currently but Prof. KC Johnson was at the courthouse and gave a tweet-thread summary of oral arguments. He said this bench ruling “appears to be a first” in lawsuits stemming from the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” Title IX guidance.
legalinsurrection.com By Jacobson thecollegefix.com By Piper
Montague’s was a case that never should have been brought. The accuser was unwilling to file a complaint herself—despite strong pressure from Yale’s Title IX officials to do so. So Yale’s Title IX officials filed the complaint themselves—ignoring the fact that the university’s own procedures gave the Title IX office very limited justifications (none of which applied in this case) to substitute itself for the accuser as the complainant…Montague was a true scholar-athlete, an Ivy Leaguer and star point guard recognized for his brains, skills and leadership — then his world came apart. Now, former Yale University basketball star Jack Montague is embroiled in a fight to finish his degree at the prestigious Connecticut school, and Yale shows no signs of capitulating after the Title IX sexual misconduct complaint that Montague says got him “wrongfully and improperly” expelled.
foxnews.com By Caleb Parke
The U.S. Department of Education has launched a Title IX investigation into Yale University amid allegations that the institution offers educational programs and scholarship opportunities that exclude men. OCR is investigating seven Yale initiatives, including the Yale Women Faculty Forum, the Working Women’s Network, the Yale University Women’s Organization, and the Yale Women’s Campaign School. According to the OCR complaint, “Yale University violates Title IX by funding/sustaining programs which practice discrimination in their admission/election practices…women are a solid majority in colleges. Yale does not have any equivalent initiatives for men, even though men are a minority on campus.” For every 10 women who graduate with a BA, only eight men will do so, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That federal research agency also finds that women have outpaced men in BA attainment in the U.S. since at least 1990.
campusreform.org By Toni Airaksinen
The Department of Education plans to issue a draft regulation in September governing colleges’ handling of campus sexual misconduct. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said when she rescinded Obama administration guidance on campus sexual assault that her department would issue a new binding regulation.
insidehighered.com By By Andrew Kreighbaum
Case Western Reserve University Settled with John Doe. ‘Due process lawsuit against
@cwru Med School. Interesting case in that acc’d student lost in fed’l court (on TIX grounds) before filing state lawsuit.’ Tweet by KC Johnson
A female University of Cincinnati student who was suspended over sexual misconduct involving a male student has sued the university, saying she was disciplined for “engaging in the same sexual freedoms that men on the campus enjoy.” What stands out is the plaintiff is a woman, and she claims that her accuser filed a complaint against her in retaliation for a complaint she filed against his friend. A university hearing found that the female student was “responsible.” After a failed appeal, the lawsuit says she was notified by letter in February that she would be suspended. She will be eligible to re-enroll after the male student graduates or is no longer a student. The lawsuit filed this week is unusual because it was brought by a woman identified only as “Jane Roe.” She says she was treated unfairly during an investigation into her sexual misconduct. A consistent theme is that the process universities use to investigate sexual assaults is flawed and prevents accused students from being able to defend themselves. All those previous local cases were filed by men. “You have a woman who was the sexual aggressor, and the school doesn’t really know how to deal with that situation,” her attorney, Josh Engel, said in an interview.
thecollegefix.com By Piper cincinnati.com By Grasha thehill.com By Gstalter
In ongoing efforts to strengthen Michigan’s leadership role in combating campus sexual assault, Gov. Rick Snyder and First Lady Sue Snyder today announced that a workgroup of experts will help provide a framework of best practices for preventing assault and a model to pilot regional centers to investigate reports of sexual misconduct. “To help keep our college students safe and ensure reports of sexual assault are being handled swiftly and appropriately on all campuses, we are going to pilot independent, regional centers to review and investigate reports of assault,” Gov. Rick Snyder said. “We have a tremendous network of experts in Michigan, and I look forward to using their expertise to help us create a new approach that ensures reports of sexual assault are handled the right way.” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has similarly suggested the concept of regional centers that could focus on investigating campus assault cases. DeVos is in the process of retooling guidelines for how campuses should handle such reports, and she laid out a few ideas last September, but the department’s Office for Civil Rights is still crafting its framework which will go before the public for comment before it’s finalized.
