Students Accused of Sexual Harassment Sue California Universities

Image by Colin Lloyd

He was a University of California graduate student who said he dated another student twice — and was shocked when she accused him of stalking and sexual harassment in a Title IX complaint in 2017.

The UC system substantiated her allegations, he said, and suspended him for two years in June 2017, reducing the sanction to three months on appeal.

But the accused student is fighting back — not only for himself but for potentially hundreds of others, predominantly men, in similar straits.

This week, he filed a class-action lawsuit in Alameda County against the 10-campus UC system, arguing that the procedures used to find him and other students responsible for sexual misconduct are unfair and failed to provide them due process. A male Cal State Fullerton student filed a similar class-action lawsuit last month against the 23-campus California State University system.

“This class action seeks to clear the records of those who’ve been wrongfully punished by this deeply flawed disciplinary system,” said Mark Hathaway, a Los Angeles attorney representing the UC and Cal State Fullerton students, identified as John Does in court filings.

Article by Teresa Watanabe; Read More at the Los Angeles Times