COLLEGE MALES: The Unfairer Sex Are Taking Legal Action
Class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of women under Title IX have been part and parcel of the legal world for decades… now it’s men’s turn to band together.
A lawsuit filed by attorney Andrew Miltenberg has recently made national headlines. This Title IX lawsuit relies on a class-action theory to address the grievances of an increasingly visible and numerous class of victims: men in higher education. Hundreds of lawsuits already seek justice on behalf of accused male students in federal courts. Title IX for All, an online archive, currently tracks around 500 such suits, many of which have led to favorable rulings.
There are similar legal challenges pending in California state courts leveled by Mark Hathaway, a specialist attorney. There are also Title IX complaints filed with the Department of Education that rely on a similar class-action theory, the earliest dating to April 2016.
Male students who receive sanctions through Title IX often suffer negative consequences that can be as damaging as loss of liberty in today’s world. Further, there is no reason to assume that men are less prone than women to severe emotional distress. Male students often are deprived of the extensive support that women receive from colleges, not to mention that their presumption of innocence is frequently denied. Moreover, male students who experience discrimination rarely find recourse to justice when they complain to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. According to our recent research, whenever OCR wrote a resolution letter between 2012 and 2019 to adjudicate adversarial proceedings between female and male parties, they sided with the female 216 times but only nine times with the male.
insidehighered– J. Moore and K.C. Pekgoz
