- The University of North Carolina is asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit from an expelled student. The student claims UNC Chapel Hill botched a sexual assault investigation against him in 2021.
- University officials argued in documents filed Monday that they followed proper procedures in the case of a student identified as Jacob Doe. Those procedures exonerated Doe in two of the four cases brought against him, according to court documents.
The University of North Carolina is urging a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit from an expelled student. The student claims UNC Chapel Hill botched an investigation of sexual assault claims against him in 2021.
Both the university and a group of individual defendants led by Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz filed motions Monday in U.S. District Court seeking the dismissal. The university also filed paperwork agreeing with the plaintiff’s request to proceed with the case anonymously.
Court documents identify the student as Jacob Doe. Four accusers in the case are each identified as Jane Roe. Other witnesses are named with pseudonyms as well.
“When four students reported Plaintiff Jacob Doe for sexual misconduct, these policies, as mandated by federal law, controlled the process Plaintiff received,” wrote UNC’s lawyers. “In accordance with these policies, and with representation from counsel, Plaintiff
submitted evidence, participated in hearings, testified in his own defense, and contested
findings through several appeals.”
“Plaintiff was found not responsible in the matters reported by Janes Roes 2 and 3. And Plaintiff was found responsible in the matters reported by Janes Roes 1 and 4,” UNC’s memorandum continued. “He was suspended for his assault of Roe 1 and expelled for his assaults of Roe 4. Plaintiff claims his sanctions in the Roe 1 and 4 matters resulted not from his own actions, but instead from UNC-CH’s bias against men. He claims that UNC-CH’s process, which twice produced results in his favor, was systemically biased against men when it produced results not in his favor.”
Doe’s suit claims UNC violated Title IX, as well as his civil rights under a federal law known as §1983. He also claims “breach of contract, negligent hiring, tortious interference with contract, and violation of North Carolina’s Constitution.”
“All of these claims are legally defective and warrant dismissal,” UNC argued in its memorandum. “First, Plaintiff filed his Complaint in an improper venue. Second, Plaintiff failed to state a Title IX claim. His allegations that gender bias caused his injury fail the legal standard, and he seeks remedies that are unavailable under Title IX. Third, Plaintiff’s §1983 claims are barred by the Eleventh Amendment and because no UNC Defendant is a ‘person.’ Fourth, the UNC Defendants are immune from Plaintiff’s state law claims.”
The eight individual defendants raise similar concerns about Doe’s case. “Plaintiff claims that the process he was afforded was biased against him because he was male. However, the ultimate outcome of the four cases against Plaintiff should silence that refrain — he was vindicated in two of the four cases,” according to a separate brief.
Doe’s lawsuit took up 192 pages. “The sheer length of the Complaint cannot make up for the lack of a factual or legal basis for Plaintiff’s claims,” individual defendants argued.
The suit alleges that Doe was a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill in 2021 “when he became the subject of a targeted campaign to destroy his reputation, his education, and his connections to the UNC community,” according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in February.
Doe alleges that four female UNC students engaged in a “premeditated and coordinated” campaign against him. One of the accusers “admitted that her actions in organizing the complaints against Plaintiff were intended to ostracize him from his friends, to have him excluded from his fraternity, and to have him lose his prestigious scholarship at UNC,” according to the complaint. Doe was a Morehead-Cain Scholar at Chapel Hill.
“Plaintiff has been shunned and cancelled by most, if not all, of his friends and peers at UNC, his reputation has been permanently destroyed, his scholarship was revoked, he was excluded from his fraternity and his apartment and, most critically, he has been permanently expelled from the entire University of North Carolina System,” Doe’s lawyers wrote.
Doe says he was found “not responsible for any policy violations” related to two of the complaining students. He was found “not responsible for most of the charges” involving a third student. Yet “the reporting parties succeeded in what they set out to do.” Doe “has suffered immense, compounding, and irreparable harm since the University accepted the complaints, without question, in the spring of 2021.”
“The University permitted the reporting parties to weaponize UNC’s Title IX process,” according to the complaint. Doe blames university investigators, the school’s Title IX Coordinator, the Equal Opportunity and Compliance Office, the Emergency Evaluation and Action Committee, and hearing panel chairs and members. They “not only failed to ensure that the investigatory and adjudicatory processes were fair and objective, but rather contributed to the defective, prejudicial, and arbitrarily inequitable processes that were replete with gender bias against Plaintiff.”
The university expelled Doe. It barred him permanently in spring 2022 from reapplying to the Chapel Hill campus or applying to any other UNC campus, “derailing his educational goals and career aspirations, and permanently tarnishing his name and reputation,” according to Doe’s lawsuit.
Doe contends UNC violated his due process rights and Title IX and engaged in a breach of contract. The suit also mentions “other state law claims.”
“As a result of the Defendants’ unlawful, unfair, gender-biased, and improper conduct, Plaintiff was subjected to disciplinary processes that failed to comport with the University’s promises to Plaintiff as an enrolled student, the tenets of Title IX, and principles of good faith and fundamental fairness,” according to Doe’s complaint.
Chief U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger of North Carolina’s Western District granted Doe a temporary restraining order on Feb. 22, one week after he filed suit. The order banned UNC “from releasing or disclosing any information concerning the disciplinary proceedings” covered in the lawsuit.
Reidinger scheduled a March 7 hearing in Charlotte to determine whether he would replace the temporary order with an injunction. The judge later canceled the temporary order and called off the hearing. Reidinger indicated that Doe and the university had resolved issues related to any publicity about the case.