FIRST OF ITS KIND RULING: Judge Grants TRO to John Doe in Rhodes College Case
A judge in the Tennessee Western District Court made a first-in-the-nation ruling by granting a former Rhodes College student’s request to enjoin Rhodes from enforcing its decision to expel him pending the outcome of his lawsuit. The Court ruled that at private institutions: “In cases involving sexual misconduct, an accused student must have the right to cross-examine adverse witnesses. To adequately assess credibility, which concerns both the accused and the accuser, there must be some form of live questioning of the accuser in front of the fact-finder; written statements of the accuser will not suffice. Even more, the accused, specifically, has the right to confront his or her accuser through cross-examination, via an agent or otherwise.”
Before this order was given, Rhodes argued that two courts within the district recently held that a plaintiff’s allegations that constitutional due process was violated because a university did not allow cross-examination does not stand when the claim is made through a breach of contract claim against a private university. However, the Court found these recent cases to be distinguishable from the one against Rhodes, since Doe’s lawyers, Brice Timmons and Megan Arthur, argued that the claim regarding cross-examination, invokes due process concerns under Title IX, not a breach of contract theory…The Court noted that the nonappearance of the victim to the alleged assault “appears to be a significant denial of due process.” Because of this, the Court found that Doe “presents facts sufficient to cast some articulable doubt on the accuracy and reliability of the disciplinary proceeding’s outcome and satisfies the first consideration of an erroneous outcome claim under Title IX.”
An evidentiary hearing has been set for Jul.10 before Judge Fowlkes.
medium-Rachel Heimann Rhodes College- Doe Victory! dailywire– Ashe Schow
