Appeals court rules against University of Arizona in Title IX assault case

An en banc appeals court Tuesday reversed a district court and an appeal court panel’s rulings in the University of Arizona’s favor in a case involving a college football player’s violent assaults against a female student that occurred off campus.

The player, who was attending the University of Arizona on a football scholarship, “repeatedly and violently” assaulted a fellow student in an off-campus house where the player was living with other university football players, according to the 8-3 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The plaintiff sued the university under Title IX which prohibits entities that receive federal financing from discriminating against individuals on the basis of sex in education programs or activities.

The U.S. District Court in Phoenix granted the university summary judgment, holding that as a matter of law, the university did not exercise control over the “context” in which the abuse occurred because it happened off campus. It was affirmed by a divided three-judge panel last year.

In overturning those rulings, the en banc majority held that a number of courts “have concluded that liability attaches under Title IX when harassment occurs off campus, so long as the educational institution has sufficient control over both the ‘harasser’ and the ‘context,’ in which the harassment takes place,” which it said was the case here.  It remanded the case for further proceedings.

One of the dissenting opinions stated the case’s circumstances “do not fall within the parameters of Title IX as enacted and as interpreted  by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

In another Title IX case, last September a federal appeals court on reinstated litigation against Ohio State University in connection with the alleged sexual abuse of hundreds of male student athletes by a former team physician.