KLLF Files Brief on Behalf of Sexual Violence and Victim Advocacy Organizations Urging Federal Appeals Court to Adopt Fair Rules for Title IX Lawsuits

Earlier today, KLLF filed a “friend of the court” brief on behalf of leading sexual violence and victim advocacy organizations, urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Court to adopt fair rules governing the deadlines for campus sexual assault survivors to sue their schools under Title IX.  KLLF’s brief was filed in support of over one hundred plaintiffs who suffered unspeakable sexual abuse at the hands of Richard Strauss, a doctor at Ohio State University. You can read the New York Times’s coverage of the case here and here.

The lower court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims as untimely, reasoning that their claims against OSU accrued when Dr. Strauss first molested them and that the statute of limitations on their claims therefore expired years before they filed their lawsuit. KLLF’s brief urges the Court of Appeals to reinstate the plaintiffs’ claims, arguing that they had no way of knowing at the time of their abuse that OSU bore responsibility for abetting Strauss’s conduct, and therefore could not have sued the school. The brief asks the appellate court to rule that the statute of limitations on the plaintiffs’ claims did not begin to run until the survivors learned, years after the fact, that the university had covered up and enabled Dr. Strauss’ abuse.

According to the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, OSU long knew that Dr. Strauss was a threat, that he preyed on male student athletes, and that he regularly molested students during medically unnecessary examinations, but that the university failed to act to protect its students. But because of a years-long coverup, Dr. Strauss’s victims did not learn about the school’s role in enabling the abuse until as recently as 2018. And because Title IX does not confer vicarious liability—meaning that schools are not liable for their employees’ conduct unless the school’s own actions demonstrate that it was “deliberately indifferent” to its students’ rights—KLLF argues that the plaintiffs could not have brought their lawsuit until they learned this information. Expecting survivors to bring discrimination lawsuits in the immediate aftermath of a sexual assault, when they have no way of discovering school officials’ wrongdoing, is flatly unreasonable and deprives thousands of survivors of the opportunity to access the justice system and have their day in court.

KLLF submitted the brief on behalf of RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), the National Crime Victims Law Institute (NCVLI), CHILD USA, and the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence (OAESV)—four organizations with collective decades of experience studying sexual violence and working with survivors. Read a copy of the brief, written by KLLF’s David Lebowitz and Adam Strychaluk, here.