‘Jane Doe asked campus security if she could face discipline’ A Minnesota liberal arts school hid exculpatory evidence from a student it found responsible for sexual assault, even though it knew his accuser had ulterior motives, according to a federal lawsuit filed earlier this month. Carleton College withheld evidence that “Jane Doe asked campus security if she could face discipline for underage drinking before filing her complaint” against “John Doe,” he alleges in the suit. John was also left in the dark about the fact that a Title IX coordinator told Jane she wouldn’t be punished if her underage drinking was disclosed “as part of a sexual assault claim,” the suit claims. He and his attor

A Penn State student has filed a federal lawsuit against the university, citing the violation of his rights to due process and equal protection during a sexual assault disciplinary prosecution. The lawsuit stems from an Office of Student Conduct investigation into an alleged sexual assault involving the student, identified as John Doe in the complaint, and a former female student, identified as Jane Roe. The investigation determined that Doe coerced Roe, who has since transferred, into having sex with him through text messages and conduct that amounted to “pressuring” and “cajoling,” according to the complaint, which was submitted by Doe and his lawyers on July 18. As a result, Doe was suspe

Since the Obama-era Dear Colleague letter, there have been almost 500 lawsuits filed at the state or federal level by accused students. One of the most unfair—in the combination of procedures and outcome—occurred at Purdue University. A lawsuit filed in January 2017 was revived last month by an important opinion issued by the Seventh Circuit. Given its significance, the case is worth a full review. The Incident In the fall 2015 semester, a male student that court papers identified as John Doe entered into a sexual relationship with a female student at Purdue University. Doe was attending Purdue on an ROTC scholarship and planned a career in the Navy. The sexual relationship ended in December

As the #MeToo movement empowers people to speak up about their sexual assault experiences, colleges across the nation are facing lawsuits from students accused in rape and sexual harassment cases. Now, some of the accused are claiming colleges are not equipped to handle sexual assault investigations in an unbiased fashion. Columbia is currently facing one of those lawsuits. In a Title IX lawsuit appeal heard April 20 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a former Columbia student under the pseudonym John Doe alleges the college fosters an “anti-male bias” which discriminates against male students accused of sexual assault. The suit alleges Columbia is “anti-male,” be

In a groundbreaking move, the first-ever prospective class-action lawsuit that would benefit students accused of sexual assault has been filed against a university, potentially reversing the outcomes of dozens of sexual violence cases. Experts say the suit against Michigan State University is a clever legal maneuver that takes advantage of a significant ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judges determined in September 2018 that students accused of sexual assault, or their representatives, had a right to directly question their accuser, which legal experts said would reshape the notion of due process in these cases. The lawsuit could theoretically challenge, even retro

There’s no ‘intimate interpersonal dynamic’ in a hearing Several courts have ruled against campus sexual-misconduct investigations that prevent adjudicators from effectively comparing the credibility of accused and accusing students. Judges argue that credibility determinations are best accomplished through cross-examination in live hearings, perhaps via videoconference. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals went so far as to recommend the University of Michigan watch the movie My Cousin Vinny to learn how to do this. But many universities favor the opposite of this approach, known as the single-investigator model: One official separately interviews parties and witnesses, reaches findings an

Last month, the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a student who sued his school for unfairly finding him guilty of sexual assault. Reversing a lower court’s dismissal of the anonymous student’s claims against Purdue University, Judge Amy Coney Barrett wrote that it was “plausible” that Purdue’s investigation panel “chose to believe Jane [Doe] because she is a woman and to disbelieve John [Doe] because he is a man.” The court held that the university violated the student’s due process rights and engaged in gender discrimination, forbidden by the Title IX statute. Since 2011, the federal government has enforced Title IX in cases of campus sexual assault, with nearly 500

The experience of a false accusation can be devastating to young men, especially if they are up against a legal or academic system that views an allegation as proof of guilt. False allegations can result in everything from expulsion from school, to job loss and legal nightmares– and overwhelming feelings of shame and anger. Moreover, young men and their families may face loneliness or social isolation due to the real or imagined circumstances that their social circle harbors a misguided premise that believing all women is always helpful. The guide below is not intended to be a comprehensive guide. It is just a basic discussion of the value of work in hard times; the process of finding a

Michigan State University has settled a pair of lawsuits, one brought by a former football player who says he was falsely accused of sexual assault and the other brought by the female accuser. The woman, who gets to remain anonymous in court documents as Jane Doe, claimed MSU “did not provide her adequate support services” and didn’t enforce a campus ban on the football player whom she accused. Since the accuser is not being named, The Daily Wire will not name the accused student, who said in addition to being falsely accused, MSU violated his due process rights. The school, according to ESPN, has agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle both lawsuits, with the bulk of the money going to the acc

Barring a settlement, sex discrimination lawsuits against Grinnell College and Quinnipiac University appear to be headed to trial after judges in each case denied the school’s motion for summary judgment on both sex discrimination and breach of contract claims. These decisions demonstrate that schools need to take seriously both their obligation to respond to sexual misconduct and their obligation to conduct fair and impartial judicial proceedings. They are also significant because, coming at a later stage of litigation when discovery has already taken place, they provide the public with a look under the hood of campus judiciaries in a way that decisions at the earlier motion to dismiss stag

We forget things all the time—where we put our keys, whether we turned the oven off, anniversaries, our due process rights. You know, little things. Due process rights were important 200-plus years ago, when the Framers drafted the Constitution and were worried about the unlimited power of England’s Star Chamber. That court did whatever it wanted. It ignored exculpatory evidence, forced defendants to incriminate themselves, and invented crimes to punish the innocent. But we don’t have that problem today, do we? Actually, we do. Students at colleges around the county will tell you that star chambers are alive and well in universities’ sexual assault tribunals. Consider, for example, Purdue Un

A move to turn a lawsuit against Michigan State University by one student accused of sexual assault into a class action could overturn dozens of findings against students accused of sexual assault. It could also lead to widespread class actions against other public universities, both in Michigan and neighboring states. The suit, filed late last year and amended late last week, is the first in the nation to seek class-action status and could drastically change the landscape of lawsuits against universities. “Unfortunately, the misapplication of Title IX has reached new depths at Michigan State,” said Andrew Miltenberg, the lawyer who filed the suit for a student going by John Doe. “Michigan

A former Purdue University student was accused of sexual assault by his ex-girlfriend. Purdue, using procedures that provide little to no ability for accused students to defend themselves, found the male accused student responsible and suspended him for one year. He was expelled from the school’s Navy ROTC program, lost his ROTC scholarship, and was forced to give up his dream of joining the Navy. The student, referred to in court documents reviewed by The Daily Wire as John Doe, sued Purdue. His lawsuit was dismissed by a magistrate judge. John appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit agreed that his lawsuit should not have been dismissed. The opinion was written by n

Whenever I read a court opinion describing a campus sexual-assault proceeding, I routinely find myself shocked at the staggering unfairness and ridiculous bias of campus kangaroo courts. Driven by the need to find more men guilty — and rationalized by a #BelieveWomen ideology — campus administrators have systematically discarded every fundamental notion of due process in American law. Across the nation, courts on the right and on the left are saying no. They’re blocking biased sexual-assault adjudications, protecting basic fairness, and restoring a degree of sanity to colleges’ procedures. On Friday it was the turn of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to protect the Fourteenth Amendment,

‘Alcohol isn’t the cause of campus sexual assault. Men are’ Purdue University didn’t bother reviewing an investigative report before judging an accused student responsible for sexually assaulting another student. It didn’t show him the report, either. The public university didn’t even require his accuser to submit written testimony for a hearing she skipped. Adjudicators judged “Jane Roe” more credible without “John Doe” being able to question her motivations for accusing him, including possible retaliation for reporting her attempted suicide. This was too much for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but not because John has a “protected property interest” in his education that requires P