Court Rules Former Columbia Student Suspended for Alleged Rape Can Sue for “Anti-Male Bias” - Polidicks

[quote]Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination at schools that get federal funding, is usually invoked by alleged victims of sexual assault who say their universities failed to adequately respond to their reports. On Friday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made it easier for men accused of sexual assault to sue schools for taking the alleged victims’ side. The court ruled that a former Columbia University student can move forward with a Title IX complaint that claims the school exhibited anti-male bias when it suspended him for a year for allegedly raping a fellow student in 2013. The opinion reversed a 2015 U.S. district court decision to throw the case out. In its decision, the appeals court did not rule on whether the alleged perpetrator committed the crime or whether Columbia did indeed discriminate against him based on his sex; it just ruled that the case he presented, if it’s true, could reasonably constitute a Title IX violation. “Needless to say, the facts a plaintiff alleges in the complaint may turn out to be self-serving and untrue,” Judge Pierre N. Leval wrote on behalf of the three judges. “But a court at this stage of our proceeding is not engaged in an effort to determine the true facts.” The alleged victim’s story will likely come out when Columbia defends its suspension of the alleged perpetrator, but the alleged perpetrator says he only had consensual sexual contact with her. He also says that the school’s Title IX investigator was “motivated by pro-female sex bias” and discriminated against him by siding with the alleged victim, in part to combat the bad press Columbia was fighting at the time in regards to its handling of other sexual assault cases. “A covered university that adopts, even temporarily, a police of bias favoring one sex over the other in a disciplinary dispute, doing so in order to avoid liability or bad publicity, has practiced sex discrimination, notwithstanding that the motive for the discrimination did not come from ingrained or permanent bias against that particular sex,” Leval wrote in Friday’s decision.[/quote] [url]http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/08/02/court_rules_anti_male_bias_a_valid_title_ix_claim_for_former_columbia_student.html[/url] Note: While this is regarding a case at Columbia, it doesn't seem to be the Mattress Girl case. Paul Nungesser is still in the process of dealing with 2 lawsuits regarding that case.

Good. People who falsely accuse others of rape should received punishment

Good to see the legal system finally taking into consideration that not all men are vicious, lying rapists and that not all women are pure, innocent victims. Sad it just took several decades of false accusation to get here.

No one is being punished (yet), they are just allowing his case to go to trial. Columbia could very well prove that there wasn't sex-based discrimination at work, but it should be an interesting case. This [URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/01/former-ivy-league-athlete-suspended-for-alleged-sexual-assault-wins-important-and-surprising-court-victory/"]article [/URL]goes into more detail regarding the sort of pressures Columbia was under specifically about sexual assault against women. [editline]2nd August 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=MrWhite;50818810]Good to see the legal system finally taking into consideration that not all men are vicious, lying rapists and that not all women are pure, innocent victims. Sad it just took several decades of false accusation to get here.[/QUOTE] It's kind of shitty that lower courts just "laughed it out". We live in a society that takes for granted the fact that sexism against women is a thing, but nobody even entertains the idea that institutional sexism against men can exist in at least one capacity.

[QUOTE=Raidyr;50819044]No one is being punished (yet), they are just allowing his case to go to trial. Columbia could very well prove that there wasn't sex-based discrimination at work, but it should be an interesting case. This [URL="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/01/former-ivy-league-athlete-suspended-for-alleged-sexual-assault-wins-important-and-surprising-court-victory/"]article [/URL]goes into more detail regarding the sort of pressures Columbia was under specifically about sexual assault against women. [editline]2nd August 2016[/editline] It's kind of shitty that lower courts just "laughed it out". We live in a society that takes for granted the fact that sexism against women is a thing, but nobody even entertains the idea that institutional sexism against men can exist in at least one capacity.[/QUOTE] Stuff like this getting shut down is a case of people saying "stop exaggerating about how many false-rape claims there are, it isn't a wide-spread problem!" which overall silences the issue. The issue is one that started as one no one considered, and when people started mentioning it, it was immediately labeled as extrapolation, as if it were trying to silence other, established issues, and then never gained proper traction.

[QUOTE=LegndNikko;50819113]Stuff like this getting shut down is a case of people saying "stop exaggerating about how many false-rape claims there are, it isn't a wide-spread problem!" which overall silences the issue. The issue is one that started as one no one considered, and when people started mentioning it, it was immediately labeled as extrapolation, as if it were trying to silence other, established issues, and then never gained proper traction.[/QUOTE] Eh, it depends on how they go about it. If they are simplistic about it like you then yeah it seems like they are one of the types who hasn't even considered it and isn't interested. Finding conclusive data on the actual rate of false accusations is nearly impossible because methodologies and what constitutes a "false accusation" changes from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, leading to wildly different figures. That said, even the high end of these figures don't seem to portray it as an "epidemic" as some would argue, but of course that doesn't mean false rape accusations shouldn't be treated extremely seriously, the same way we treat any crime that may not necessarily be statistically significant.

So this court decision doesn't determine if he is guilty or not of rape, but I think it's important to protect people (male or female) from false accusations like this. Remember the Duke lacrosse team case? The prosecutor was just saying horrible shit about these guys on national tv and it was all bull. Thankfully he was later disbarred I believe. But even though those guys were found innocent, they definitely were viewed differently by the public and that could affect your job opportunities, etc.

Just so those that are hoping for "false claim" punishment. That is not what the guy is after: [quote]The court ruled that a former Columbia University student can move forward with a Title IX complaint that claims the school exhibited anti-male bias when it suspended him[/quote] He is going after the school, not the accuser.

[QUOTE=bord2tears;50821610]Just so those that are hoping for "false claim" punishment. That is not what the guy is after: He is going after the school, not the accuser.[/QUOTE] Guess it is cause the school can dish our more money than the accuser?

[QUOTE=Dominic0904;50821848]Guess it is cause the school can dish our more money than the accuser?[/QUOTE] The accuser wasn't the one that kicked him out of school for a year over the [I]suspicion[/I] that he did it.