Sexual assault victims have the right to sue universities that they believe violated a federal law that protects students, faculty and staff from sexual discrimination. But attorneys and victim advocates say that some students receive inadequate information on their rights under the law, known as Title IX, leading suits to be dismissed for not being filed quickly enough.
In one such case, a student at Prairie View A&M University, a historically black university in Prairie View, Texas, reported to police and her tennis coach in 2015 that a fellow student athlete had sexually assaulted her.
About a year later, the victim, identified as Mary Doe in court records, learned that her coach had purchased an out-of-state plane ticket for her assailant, who wasn’t named in the lawsuit, in an attempt to help him escape punishment. At the time, the coach, who also wasn’t identified in court records, claimed to be unaware of the alleged assailant’s location.
The student who assaulted Doe was later indicted on sexual assault charges. Her coach left the university, blaming Doe for his departure, court records show.
And even though it wasn’t until a year after her assault that Doe learned her Title IX rights had been violated, a judge dismissed her case in March because it had been filed after Texas’s two-year statute of limitations. According to court records, Doe had filed her lawsuit just a month and nine days too late.
Houston-based attorney Michelle Ciolek, who represented Doe, said that the victim and her parents first learned the coach had helped the student athlete flee during a bond hearing a year after her assault.
“The initial blow at the bond hearing … was obviously heart-wrenching for them, because they had stood behind (the coach), really trusted him and had no idea that any of that had happened,” Ciolek said. “And then, for this to kind of blow up in their faces again and have the court dismiss the case – I think the parents are frustrated and feel kind of helpless in this situation, in the sense that they wish they had pursued something earlier on, but they just didn’t know.”
Even in the #MeToo era, victim advocates say that students sometimes receive poor guidelines on their rights under Title IX, leaving them unaware of the narrow time frame to file suits within statutes of limitations, which are determined by state law.
How students learn about their rights under Title IX
Title IX bars colleges and universities that receive federal funds from discrimination based on sex, and it also outlines actions they must take when they first become aware of sexual assault and harassment allegations. Universities are required to investigate allegations of sexual assault and conduct impartial and prompt investigations, although according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which enforces Title IX, universities aren’t required to complete investigations within a set amount of time. Under a separate law known as the Clery Act, universities must disclose on-campus crime statistics, including any sexual assaults that occur.
This year, higher education groups and victim advocates criticized the Department of Education’s proposed Title IX rules, which would create new protections for accused students, including the right to cross-examine their accusers during hearings.
In response to an interview request, a Department of Education spokesperson said no one was available unless questions were posed in writing and referred Big If True to Title IX links on its website.
When a student experiences sexual assault, she may find the distinction between a criminal case and potential lawsuit against a university confusing.
“The university has numerous laws that they need to comply with, and although Title IX may or may not be mentioned, I don’t think there’s a very thorough understanding of what all it entails and what rights a victim or student has under Title IX,” Ciolek said.
According to the Department of Education, universities are required to publish their grievance procedures for reporting complaints under Title IX, including those regarding sexual harassment and violence.
“Most campuses have some sort of a brochure or a pamphlet that they give to those students when they report it,” said W. Scott Lewis, a co-founder and board member for the Association for Title IX Administrators. “So, the ones that don’t – I think that’s maybe where you have them fall short.”
Informing students of their rights is just one element to following Title IX requirements.
“The bigger piece of the problem is that they’re just not following Title IX,” said Elizabeth Tang, a fellow at the National Women’s Law Center. “And one way that a school would be in violation of Title IX would be not telling students what their rights are, but all the other ways would be, like, literally not providing the services that they’re required to provide.”
Lawsuits filed across the country in recent years allege universities failed to investigate or act on reports of sexual assaults.
A high-profile lawsuit filed in 2017 alleged that 10 women who attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas were sexually assaulted between 2004 and 2016. After reporting their assaults, court records said the women received insufficient responses from the university, which failed to investigate their reports and punish the culprits.
A Baylor spokesperson declined to comment for this story.
Ohio State University has faced at least seven lawsuits involving almost 160 plaintiffs who allege that the university failed to respond to their sexual assault reports against a former athletics physician, Dr. Richard Strauss, who died in 2005. An independent report released by Ohio State in May found that Strauss had abused at least 177 former students from 1978 to 1998.
A spokesperson for Ohio State did not respond to requests for comment.
According to a lawsuit filed against the University of Idaho last year, after reporting a sexual assault to university staff in 2013, former student Mairin Jameson was told that because she was assaulted off-campus, it could not be investigated by the university.
After visiting the campus Women’s Center, which advocates for gender equity, Jameson reported the assault to the dean of students, which forced staff to look into her assault, resulting in the discovery of video evidence of the incident.
The university did not respond to a request for comment.
How statutes of limitations impact Title IX lawsuits
Students, faculty and staff can file separate Title IX complaints with universities and with the education department’s Office for Civil Rights.
The Office for Civil Rights requires complaints to be filed within 180 days of the most recent incident involving discrimination, although individuals can request waivers to file past that time frame.
Lewis said some students face requirements to file complaints with universities under Title IX within a certain time frame. For instance, the University of Illinois-Springfield typically does not investigate complaints received after 180 days unless the university’s Title IX coordinator finds an ongoing risk to the campus, according to the university’s complaint procedures.
“A statute of limitations of reporting a policy violation would have the effect of chilling reports,” Lewis said. “And additionally, interestingly, some of these schools that have proposed having a statute of limitations on Title IX-based incidents don’t have a statute of limitations on their other conduct matters.”
If a student is aware of a Title IX violation, the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits acts as another obstacle. Title IX lawsuits are filed in federal courts, but their statutes of limitations are based on state law.
Texas, for instance, has a two-year statute of limitations on Title IX lawsuits, which affected Doe’s case against Prairie View A&M. Ciolek, Doe’s attorney, said that more guidance on when the statute of limitations begins would be helpful, because filing a lawsuit is the last thing on victims’ minds after an assault.
“They’re trying to cope with what happened to them, they’re trying to get their lives back on track and get their grades back up if they’ve dropped, and try to feel safe,” Ciolek said. “And so I think it’s kind of placing a pretty high burden on these victims to really kind of jump into a different state of mind and think, ‘Hey, I might have a Title IX case, and I need to start building that case up.’”
Judges have discretion over when statutes of limitations should begin. In 2017, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ruled that 10 sexual assault victims could sue Baylor University under Title IX until the spring of 2018, ordering the two-year statute of limitations to be measured from 2016, when it was revealed that Baylor had failed to respond to the sexual assault allegations.
Universities sometimes use the statute of limitations to argue that their cases should be dismissed.
After Ohio State was taken to court over the Strauss allegations, the university apologized for the victims’ mistreatment during the time of their claims, but requested for the court to dismiss at least three of the cases because they were filed past Ohio’s two-year statute of limitations.
After Ohio State released the report revealing the scope of Strauss’s abuse, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine expressed support for the removal of the limitations period on the prosecution of sexual assault.
In Jameson’s case, the University of Idaho filed a motion to dismiss her lawsuit in November, arguing that it was filed after Idaho’s two-year statute of limitations. A judge has not yet ruled on the request to dismiss the case.
To Tang, the statute of limitations for Title IX lawsuits presents issues as a whole.
“I think that statutes of limitations are generally a way to hinder people who have suffered harm from getting the help that they need,” Tang said. “Specifically with sexual harassment and sexual assault, statutes of limitations are particularly harmful, because we know we have so much evidence showing that delayed reporting of sexual harassment, sexual assault and other types of gender-based violence is extremely common. And so, putting a two-year statute of limitations (on cases) … really cuts people off from getting justice.”
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