I disagree with this. There probably is not a justiciable case against the individual student. Forcing the plaintiff to bring one does not help in defining what the limits/requirements of Title IX are, which appears to be the thrust of the case, and to my mind is the interesting legal question.
Hey, lawyers gotta eat too! In all seriousness, of course he is trying to get compensated in addition to having his name cleared. We would have a very different system if the only legit cases challenging governmental action (or inaction) were brought by people who could underwrite what will likely be a six figure bill for the litigation.
Well we really can’t disagree on this point. If John Doe has no justifiable case against Jane Doe then UChicago has no obligation to step in and address her social media activity. And that is the basis of his case against the university - he was being harassed and defamed by Jane Doe and they had an obligation to direct her to cease the activity.
That is in no way true. A hostile enviornment claim has never required that the underlying conduct be actionable. Certainly you would agree that placing the oft cited Rigid Tool calendar in a mechanic’s garage is not in and of itself an unlawful act, although it may form the basis of a hostile enviornment claim brought by a female mechanic. You would not argue that a female mechanic should be required to sue the guy who hung up the calendar in addition to the garage in order to bring a discrimination claim, right? Same principal applies, at least theoretically, here.
I don’t think this is quite accurate either. I believe his claim is that the university would have acted differently with a similarly situated female. As @hanna said up the thread, imagine a campaign to “slut shame” a female student in advance of her theater production. Would Chicago have allowed that to occur? Would Chicago, after the harrasment complaint had been dismissed, still forced a female student to switch her lab in order to placate her accuser? Those are the issues at the heart of the case. Maybe the court here takes the tack of the Court in the mattress girl case and says unless you have specific record proof of the exact situation occuring with the sexes reversed the case should be dismissed. But maybe it follows the Second Circuit case from last month and lets the plaintiff try and make the case. We will have to see. But there are far more moving parts than the idea that he has to be able to prove a defamation suit against Jane Doe.
@Ohiodad51 relative to his counts against or involving Jane Doe, we are speaking of actions specifically performed by her. Namely filing a false claim and harassment/defamation coming from her social media accounts.
My point is that you can’t claim John Doe released her from the suit because “he had no justifiable claim against her” and then impose some obligation on UChicago. If he can’t justify a claim that she harassed him via social media or filed a false claim with the Title IX office what is UChicago supposed to do? What are they reacting to? If there is an obligation on behalf of UChicago then the creation of the hostile environment or the false accusation has to be a “justifiable claim.”
The protest is irrelevant to John Doe’s case-- there is no mention of the protest in the complaint whatsoever. There is mention of her social media activity asking why the university is sponsoring a play produced by “the man who assaulted her.” He never claimed UChicago had any obligation relative to the protest – it was a dozen students gathering in front of a building adjacent to the theater carry general anti-rape signs. His issue is her social media activity questioning the production.
The change in the physics lab did not involve Jane Doe so is irrelevant to our present discussion of why he released her. from the suit. It involved the other woman that lost the Title IX case against him.
The fact that he had to switch classes isn’t part of the case but interesting nonetheless less because theoretically that woman failed to prove her allegation and common sense says she should have rearranged her schedule if she didn’t want to be in class with him. But perhaps he did it as a goodwill gesture.
I think somebody needs to test the legal validity of using Title IX to resolve these disputes on campus. We cannot be basing huge changes in due process for the accused based essentially on a Dear Colleague letter specially since there has been a change in the administration. Schools require better and more reliable guidance on what is acceptable and what isn’t. Right now many are guessing.
Fear of losing federal funds is driving a lot of administrative behavior right now. I hope this lawsuit brings better clarity to other universities as well
Ah sorry, I got lost in the comments. It should be a claim against the college. Although there was an interesting newsblip this morning in the feed from Buzzfeed which I don’t follow but it pulled into my feed:
Of course you can. It happens all the time. There is no requirement in any type of sexual harrassment law, to cite the obvious example for the secod time, that the alleged harrassing individual be named a defendant.
The easy answer is that he and his lawyers would argue that UC is supposed to provide him a safe enviornment free from harrasment. Second, why does he need Jane Doe as a party to prove she sent text messages or whatever? Third, assume that at least one of her Title IX complaints against him were filed as retaliation. What law did she actually break by doing so? Why is he compelled to prove that case (whatever it is) when his claim is that the University violated its policy by hearing the alleged retaliatory complaint?
@ohiodad51 I never claimed she had to be a party to the litigation, although I remain perplexed that he released her given his claim he was irreparably defamed by the alleged false charge of sexual assault. Why let her walk away from something like that?
I responded to your comment that he did not have to support a “justifiable claim” in connection with Jane Doe. Yes he does. He builds a great deal of his case against UChicago on his claim that Jane Doe defamed/harassed him and filed a false complaint with the Title IX office ruining his reputation. If he cannot support any of those contentions there was no obligation for UChicagoe to act.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that Jane Doe is not a necessary party to the litigation?
@HarvestMoon1, maybe this is the confusion. I said a justiciable case - meaning, loosely, a claim that can be tried to a verdict in a court of law. That is different than saying his claims are justifiable, which generally means reasonable, or at least arguable. Someone can be justified in thinking they were harrassed, but not have a justiciable claim against the individual harrasing them.
And correct, as I understand the law Jane Doe is no more a necessary party to this action than any employee who harasses a plaintiff in the work place is. But saying someone is not a necessary party is stating a conclusion, not providing a reason. I was attempting to explain the reason why she is not a necessary party, based on your earlier posts to the effect, to wit:
and
For what it is worth, I took your use of the terms “justify a case” and “justifiable case” in the above quotes to mean a provable claim, which you seems to believe to be a predicate to any action against the University. Did you mean something else?
I think the confusion is that I read your “justiciable” in post #40 as “justifiable.”
At the end of the day a judge is going to have to find her actions rose to the level of harassment before imposing a duty to act on UChicago. In my mind that would be a “justifiable” claim that he had against her.
But we are still left with the question of why he released her. I can maybe see it with the social media activity claims, but for the false complaint for sexual assault? With what was written in that blog? Would love to see the terms of that settlement agreement, but they declined to even let the court review it.
Well, given my truly horrible typing skills, it’s not hard to see why, lol.
And to me, something that “rises to the level of harassment” means conduct that would support a stand alone claim for harassment which I do not believe is required here. That said, I would agree that the complained of conduct will have to be determined to be harassing, even if he can’t make an individual claim for harassment or defamation. Make sense?
And I don’t know what his claim against her would be for filing an allegedly false claim. Courts are very loath to impose liability even for pretty obvious abuse of the legal process. I can’t imagine any court being excited about finding some tort right of action in allegedly abusing what is effectively a private administrative process. I assume the claim against the university in that respect would hinge on whether their policy prohibits the filing of a retaliatory claim, and then some argument that the decision to proceed with both of hers, and not his, is discriminatory.
Also, as a somewhat related aside, the Judge in the Yale basketball player case denied the injunction requesting reinstatement recently.
I think we can both agree nothing about title ix resembles anything that exists in the real world. Out in the real world, colleges and schools excepted, no private business is expected to investigate and adjudicate whether one of their clients or customers sexually assaulted another one of their clients.
That’s far from true. I think businesses providing public accommodations probably do have a duty to protect customers from one another to a considerable extent. They don’t investigate or adjudicate, necessarily, at least not in a formal way. But people get tossed out of bars and restaurants for inappropriate behavior all the time, and often are told not to come back, at least not for a while. And often that is the result of a pretty summary investigation and adjudication (by a bouncer, bartender, or manager) as to who was doing what to whom, and who is at fault. Clothing stores, too. And pretty much all businesses have to police their employees to some extent to make certain there isn’t a hostile work environment for one or another class of employees, certainly including women. That can be enormously complicated, but it’s easier to fire or to reassign employees compared to freshmen.
I think Title IX is really important and really valuable. I fear that it is getting undermined by turning it into a Sex Code for a bunch of late teens who are hormone-intoxicated but generally incompetent at all but the most basic physical elements of sexuality.
Any restaurant or bar or clothing store would think you’re totally crazy if you complained to them about what another customer did off the premises. If we treated colleges that way, title ix would only apply to events that happen on campus in public areas. Further, if any allegation about one of their customers was serious enough, a bar or restaurant or clothing store would call the actual police and let them try to sort it out.
At the end of the day schools have a duty to investigate any kind of assault or violence that takes place on their campus. They have an obligation to maintain a safe campus.
Sexual assault is just one violation schools address and the process is the same for other violations – if you punch your roommate in the nose and he reports it, you are going to be hauled into a hearing and judged by 4 or 5 members of a panel under a preponderance of the evidence standard. Expulsion or suspension is always a possibility under the codes. So if you are going to attack the process for sexual assault, you are going to have to do the same for all the other offenses that colleges adjudicate – including drug offenses, possession of weapons and general assault cases. Process is the same.
I don’t know what @roethlisburger is talking about “off premises.” Everything significant in this case happened on campus. The non-intercourse sexual encounter that was the subject of Jane Doe’s complaint happened during freshman orientation (and her complaint was filed at the end of her third year).
I don’t have any problem with colleges policing sexual assault by one student on another. But I think the definition of sexual assault has been stretched to the point of being impossible to identify clearly. And that drives everyone nuts.
This case essentially has nothing to do with any of that, except maybe at two or three removes. (We don’t know much about the first complaint against John Doe, and it’s clear that the second kerfluffle was organically related to the first.) My sense is that this case is about the intersection of an angry young woman who decided to wage a small jihad against a guy she had liked for a long time (who had rejected her for her friend, and then had something really negative happen with the friend), a guy with thin skin and it seems a lot of money for lawyers, and some lawyers who are trying to score some political points.
Nothing really connects with anything else. The guy is not the victim of some vast anti-male conspiracy. He’s someone who really ticked off some women but has been protected by the process. He might even have gotten some relief from harassment if he hadn’t been trying so hard to turn himself into a test case. The woman seems out of control – although I caution again that none of us has heard her side of whatever story there is. But it looks like she’s lucky the guy she picked on is such a jerk, because otherwise she could have faced serious discipline, and may still. The lawyers want to go to war with the Department of Education, which essentially had nothing to do with whatever teenage drama was happening.
Whatever the facts of this particular case, Title IX does apply to off campus acts, and so Title IX in general is being applied off premises in a way no other business would even consider. Even on campus, if the alleged event happened in the accused’s dorm room or apartment, the closest real world analogy would be a landlord(university)-tenant(student) relationship. Trying to evict a tenant is nothing at all like tossing someone out of a bar or restaurant or clothing store.