On Tuesday, May 1, 2018 Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mary Strobel ordered Pomona College to pay $130,000 in attorneys’ fees to an accused student in a faulty Title IX administrative process. In setting aside Pomona College’s Title IX decision against the student, the court found that Pomona College had improperly told the complainant that she could answer questions in advance in writing, a procedure not found in Pomona College’s policies. The complainant also refused to attend the campus hearing, in person or by Skype, even though the hearing date was arranged to accommodate her schedule, so “Petitioner was unable to ask the [adjudicator] to pose questions to Roe at the hearing. It is entirely unclear whether the [adjudicator] would have made the same credibility determinations had Roe been questioned. The court finds that cumulatively, these conditions were prejudicial to Petitioner and denied him a fair hearing.”

In ordering Pomona College to pay $130,000 of the student’s legal fees, Judge Strobel found that the accused student’s court appeal “enforced the right to due process in academic sexual harassment investigations and proceedings” and “conferred a significant benefit on the general public or a large class of persons.” California Code of Civil Procedure sec. 1021.5 provides for an award of attorney’s fees when a lawsuit results in a significant public benefit, in this case the right of college and university students to due process in Title IX disciplinary cases.

The student was represented by Mark M. Hathaway

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To much of the public, Saifullah Khan’s lightning-fast acquittal by a jury was perplexing and unjust. It was only when jurors and court observers shared their firsthand accounts, as did  Cynthia Garrett of Families Advocating for Campus Equality  that the public got a sense of how shoddy the rape case against the Yale student was ..“the Yale community seems to be in denial” when it comes to giving Khan a fair chance at returning to the University. “It isn’t even a measure of the differences in standards of evidence,” said Garrett. “[The jury] didn’t believe her, they said they didn’t believe her, she was not credible, this is not he said-she said, this is ‘we don’t believe her, and the evidence supports what he said.’ … Why is it that an ideology has to supersede actual facts?” Now that Khan is a free man, he is entering a secret prison: Yale’s Title IX proceeding.

thecollegefix.com By Greg Piper

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