Potential big deal for Title IX lawsuits
A little-noticed legal ruling this week could be a big deal for Title IX lawsuits going forward.
If I’m reading this right, colleges and universities could be held accountable not only for cases in which they were deliberately indifferent to reports of sexual harassment and assault after they happened. They could also be held accountable for inadequate management of campus sexual violence before the next attacks occur because their actions (or lack of them) increased the risk for more victims, violating Title IX.
What does that look like in real life? The ruling from a three-judge Appeals Court panel gave this example and others in its ruling in Doe, et al v. Metro. Gov’t. of Nashville & Davidson Cnty.:
Girls at two different Nashville, Tenn. schools — Maplewood High and Hunters Lane High School — were pressured by boys into sexual acts on campus that were video recorded and then distributed, leading to further harassment and bullying. “During discovery, Jane Doe and Sally Doe requested disciplinary records across MNPS schools from 2012 to 2016 related to sexual misconduct, resulting in documentation of ‘over 950 instances of sexual harassment, over 1200 instances of inappropriate sexual behavior, 45 instances of sexual assault, and 218 instances of inappropriate sexual contact.’ DE 101, Dist. Ct. Order, Page ID 4131. Many of those incidents involved students taking and/or distributing sexually explicit photographs or videos of themselves or other students.” In other words, this already was a well-known, widespread problem that the school district failed to adequately address, the girls and their parents alleged. The emotional toll forced one girl to leave the school. The district should be held accountable for that even if those earlier instances didn’t involve the current victims, they argued.
Title IX expert Alexandra Brodsky tweeted, “Fantastic Title IX opinion out of the Sixth Circuit. Court limits its ‘one free rape rule’ to higher ed cases and recognizes official policy claims, aligning with Karasek and Simpson.” Brodsky, who cofounded Know Your IX as a young activist, now is a civil rights lawyer. Her reference to Karasek refers to End Rape on Campus cofounder Sophie Karasek and two other women who sued the University of California, Berkeley in 2015. An Appeals Court ruled they didn’t meet the stiff criteria for proving the university was deliberately indifferent after they reported being sexually assaulted but their suit could proceed on the claim that the university’s handling of campus sexual assault before the attacks put them at greater risk for assault, violating Title IX.
To quote my book 37 Words, these rulings raise “an interesting possibility that harkens back to the 1992 Supreme Court ruling in Franklin v. Gwinnett. Title IX’s then-twenty-year history and extensive guidance from [the Office for Civil Rights] on how to provide equitable athletics meant that any sex discrimination in athletics today most likely is intentional, the court stated.” If the Office for Civil Rights could maintain consistent guidelines for managing sexual harassment and assault, perhaps someday Title IX violations in this area also could be presumed to be intentional and not have to be proven time and again.
Elsewhere
More than a quarter of Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences know someone in their department who was sexually harassed in a Harvard workplace, a survey found. Michigan State University‘s understaffed Office of Institutional Equity can’t keep up with complaints about sexual misconduct, an outside review reported. Years of understaffing and untrained or under-credentialed employees in the Title IX office of California State University, Fresno partly explain the school’s shoddy management of Title IX complaints, according to a Fresno Bee investigation.
The Office for Civil Rights declared that San Juan Batista School of Medicine in Puerto Rico violated Title IX. Princeton University moved to fire a classics professor for sexual misconduct with an undergraduate student. A judge dismissed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania State University and its head fencing coach for alleged sexual harassment of a woman who was not affiliated with the university. Politico profiled some of the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit challenging the right of 200-some religious colleges and universities to discriminate against LGBTQ students and employees. Oberlin (Ohio) College is taking some flak for not releasing results of its 2022 Campus Climate Survey about sexual misconduct, as other colleges do.
A six-month investigation determined that a Talawanda Middle School teacher in Cincinnati sexually harassed two students. A female elementary school teacher sued the Independence School District in Kansas City, Mo., for tolerating sexual harassment and retaliation after she complained about it. The article is behind a paywall, but a lawsuit alleges that administrators in charge of Mount St. Mary High School in Oklahoma fostered a “rape culture” that endangers students.
On the up side
Sports Illustrated devoted its cover and a story to Title IX’s 50th anniversary. One example of Title IX’s legacy: The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team this week reached a historic agreement for equal pay.
Twenty years ago, only 17 percent of four-year colleges and universities allowed faculty to pause tenure-system deadlines for family or health reasons; today 82 percent do, a survey by the American Association of University Professors found. Higher Ed Dive published a nice summary of key events in federal Title IX policy over the past decade, though it arbitrarily starts at 2011. That may give the misimpression that attention to these issues started under President Obama when, in fact, they relate to multiple important policy events in the previous decades. You know what I’m going to say here: Read 37 Words for the full story.
Where you’ll find me
May 26, 6:30 p.m. PT — A virtual get-together with the Riverside, Calif. chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW).
June 9, 7:00 p.m. PT — Join me and Lucy Jane Bledsoe, author of the new Young Adult novel No Stopping Us Now, at a virtual event hosted by Green Apple Books on the Park, San Francisco.
June 14, 6:00 p.m. ET — I’ll be in Washington, D.C. for a Title IX 50th Anniversary event hosted by the National Women’s Law Center, speaking with NWLC President Fatima Goss Graves and legendary Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes. Stay tuned for details.
June 22 — Lucy Jane Bledsoe and I will Zoom with residents of Rossmoor, Walnut Creek, Calif.
June 23, 3:00-4:30 p.m. ET — It’s Title IX’s 50th birthday! I’ll be Zooming with members of the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA) to celebrate. Read details here. And watch a 30-second promo video with moi here.
Read about the Supreme Court’s history of curtailing Title IX and other civil rights laws in my article in The Washington Post Made by History section, published May 9, 2022. I am delighted that former Chancellor of the University of Illinois, Springfield Susan Koch wrote a glowing review of 37 Words in the Des Moines Register. The Nation magazine published an excerpt from my chapter 5, which introduces Title IX’s application by the movement against sexual violence. The Washington Monthly gave 37 Words a fine review — check it out! The Wall Street Journal published a review of my book and I wrote a Letter to the Editor correcting some misinformation in that review.
My virtual fireside chat with Kenyora Parham, executive director of End Rape on Campus, gives a good overview of the book. Plus video clips of interviews with some of the book’s main characters! The New York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History & Academic Affairs posted a discussion with me and some of the earliest Title IX activists, available on YouTube. If you registered for the American Historical Association 2022 conference, you can watch a video that will be available through June of our panel session on “Fifty Years of Title IX: Evolutions in the Struggle Against Sex Discrimination in Education.”
The Washington, D.C. chapter of the National Organization for Women interviewed me on the DC NOW podcast. Here’s a Facebook Live video of my book launch event at the Norwich Bookstore, though you may want to just listen instead of watch because the first four minutes are sideways. (Oops!) It’s still a wonderful discussion with Kate Rohdenburg of WISE.
Lastly, here are links to order your copy of my new book, 37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination (The New Press, 2022).
#titleix #37words
