JUDGE APPROVES DISABLED Veteran’s Suit Against UMass Dartmouth For Anti-Male Bias
Representing oneself in court is very difficult, let alone in a Title IX case where a wide array of facts, procedures and legal precedent must be carefully laid out. It’s all the more noteworthy that a disabled veteran suing his former university for anti-male bias has successfully represented himself, to the point where his lawsuit will move into discovery. A federal judge refused to dismiss several claims against the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth by John Harnois, who was a Ph.D. candidate in oceanography at the public university.
U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns approved four variations of Title IX claims against various university officials to move forward Oct. 28: selective enforcement, erroneous outcome, creation of a hostile environment and Title IX retaliation. Other approved claims were for due process and state civil rights violations. Harnois alleges that multiple faculty members engaged in discriminatory behavior based on his gender. The university performed a frivolous Title IX investigation and spread sensitive information that has delayed his studies and caused severe emotional distress, he claims. Despite an admitted lack of evidence to find him guilty, the university issued a written “warning” that isolated him in his studies and demoted him to an apparently slower graduation track, the suit claims.
Judge Stearns took seriously the former student’s argument that the university made him a whipping boy in response to “funding pressures” from the U.S. Department of Education and a “costly gender discrimination lawsuit” by a female employee. “These allegations, collectively, if believed by a jury, are sufficient to support an inference that Harnois’s gender was a ‘motivating factor’ in the decision of UMass Dartmouth to initiate a baseless Title IX investigation,” the judge wrote.
thecollegefix-Ethan Berman
