Jauregui Law Firm Quora Answer: What are the chances that today's college student facing a misconduct or harassment investigation under Title IX will win the investigation or his lawsuit?
A student misconduct investigation for violations related to sexual activity while in College is probably the worst experience that any man can face. The investigation alone will leave the man injured on the field. As the Federal District Court in Massachusetts noted, Title IX proceedings leave respondents “marked for life as a sexual predator.” Doe v. Brandeis Univ., 177 F. Supp. 3d 561, 573 (D. Mass. 2016). Should the man responding to these investigations fail to lawyer up, the result is all but guaranteed to become a permanent mark on his resume that will for ever affect his self-worth and his ability to find a job. (1)
Because the student misconduct process at U.S. schools answers to the student activism on U.S. schools, the reality facing male respondents becomes apparent: Schools only enforce student misconduct, and turn themselves into a “sex police” because the school’s brand is at stake. Once the school brand is at stake the facts of these “she said-he said” affairs no longer matter. The many hours of skilled work required to determine who is actually telling the truth, never occur. What does happen is that the man responding to this misconduct will lose, not so the woman gets justice, but just so that the school’s brand improves.
This is why men not only immediately lawyer up when facing a misconduct investigation, but also why men often sue their schools for violations of their rights, including under Title IX, when the process goes against them, as it is inevitably bound to happen. (2). The situation is even more of an emergency if the man plays NCAA sports. (3).
There is one positive bit of news in this field. So many men have been forced to sue their schools in so many states that the most recent statistics finally show what we, at the Jauregui Law Firm, have been saying since we started dealing with student-on-student sexual assault on campus back in 2013: That men were bound to win (4). Now they are.
“Reversing the previously slow pace of litigation, the years since the 2011 Title IX policy changes have featured at least 347 federal lawsuits, and more than 150 in state courts. Colleges have more often than not been on the losing side of these rulings.”
Samantha Harris and K.C. Johnson, Campus Courts in Court: The Rise in Judicial Involvement in Campus Sexual Misconduct Adjudications, N.Y.U. Journal of Legislation & Public Policy, (Vol 22, Issue 1) at 64 and footnote 82 available at: https://nyujlpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Harris-Johnson-Campus-Courts-in-Court-22-nyujlpp-49.pdf. These most recent statistics confirm the trend that had been stated back in 2017 in the Proskauer report, “Title IX, the Accused”, which is available at https://www.proskauer.com/report/title-ix-report-the-accused-08-28-2017 and shows that:
As of August 29, 2017, out of 130 cases where students complained of Title IX discrimination and other forms of abuse stemming from their response to a sexual misconduct process, 28.5% of the cases were dismissed by a court, 24.6% of the cases settled, and 46.9% of the cases went on to litigation from a cohort where the schools moved to dismiss the case 57.7% of the time.
These most recent statistics also conform to what even the group advising schools on Title IX also says:
“The field is losing case after case in federal court on what should be very basic due process protections. Never before have colleges been losing more cases than they are winning, but that is the trend as we write this. The courts are not expanding due process yet, but are insisting that colleges provide the full measure of college-based due process that has been required over almost 60 years of litigation by students.”
The 2017 NCHERM Group Whitepaper “Due Process and the Sex Police” available at: https://cdn.tngconsulting.com/website-media/ncherm.org/unoffloaded/2017/04/TNG-Whitepaper-Final-Electronic-Version.pdf
In addition, these most recent statistics are shocking because for at least 9 years now, schools have not changed their ways, and because each one of those lawsuits represents a man, his family, and his legal team putting it all on the line to achieve fairness; a concept and a right that the school should have granted the man, and his family, in the first place. (5). But as our educational system stands, and as this 9 year old sexual misconduct litigation record proves, only a court’s ruling on the school’s violations of Title IX and other rights the school owes the responding man will yield the best measure of relief for the rest of this man’s life, namely: A legal settlement hopefully coupled with expungement of this disastrous student misconduct complaint.
Not to in any way minimize the trauma that legitimate victims of on-campus rape experience, or to say male respondents are more traumatized than complainants, but rather to prove the anti-male bias that the Title IX system has shown for the past 9 years consider its pricing difference. While men responding to sexual assault allegations (once proven biased) settle for little money and a clean slate, women (claiming sexual assault) have received settlements (from the school, not the man) in the high six-figure or low seven-figure range. See Tatiana Schlossberg, UConn to Pay $1.3 Million to End Suit on Rape Cases, N.Y. TIMES (July 18, 2014), https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/nyregion/uconn-to-pay-1-3-million-to-end-suit-on-rape-cases.html; Marc Tracy, Florida State Settles Suit over Jameis Winston Rape Inquiry, N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 25, 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/sports/football/florida-state-to-pay-jameis-winstons-accuser-950000-in-settlement.html
These most recent statistics do not provide false hope that the school’s Title IX staff will be fair to male respondents. What they prove is that men need to immediately lawyer-up during the sexual misconduct investigation, and that even then they need to prepare to take their schools to court as those lawsuits have become the only remedy to safeguard a man’s good name. THE CHANCES OF A WIN, ARE GOOD!
Raul Jauregui
Jauregui Law Firm
I am an attorney and I defend mostly respondents of sexual misconduct in colleges or universities. This is absolutely not my legal opinion or my legal advice, but rather survey of the Title IX topic. If you’re in this situation, in any way, consult a lawyer now.
As posted in Quora:
ENDNOTES:
1 The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has written in a powerful decision about Title IX male-discrimination that a student found responsible for sexual misconduct “‘may face severe restrictions, similar to being put on a sex offender list, that curtail his ability to gain a higher education degree’ . . . this disciplinary notation of responsibility for sexual misconduct has a very negative effect on ‘a person’s good name, reputation, honor, or integrity’” Doe v. Miami Univ., 882 F.3d 579, 600 (6th Cir. 2018). See also, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/12/title-ix-lawsuit-against-miami-university-has-new-traction
2 We’ve explored this with more detail here: https://www.studentmisconduct.com/news/jauregui-law-office-quora-answer-to-why-is-it-that-men-sue-their-school-under-title-ix-more-often-than-women
3 If you’re an athlete for an NCAA team your situation is even worse. We’ve also explored that here: https://www.studentmisconduct.com/news/jauregui-law-office-quora-answer-of-course-ncaa-athletes-face-a-profound-anti-male-bias-when-it-comes-to-sexual-misconduct-and-title-ix
4. See our case studies of men suing their Philadelphia-area schools under Title IX which have our estimations of how and why the man would win or not, here: https://www.studentmisconduct.com/clients
5 One of the many reasons why schools do not change, we believe, correlates to the staffing of Title IX offices in the schools. The staffing of those offices perpetuates a systemic bias against men. We’ve discussed that before here: https://www.studentmisconduct.com/news/jauregui-law-office-2019-survey-of-diversity-in-philadelphia-area-college-and-university-title-ix-staff