A federal court in Kentucky has ruled that campus sexual assault hearings are “quasi-criminal” in nature, which should send a signal to activists and the federal government that due process rights must be adopted.
Judge Joseph M. Hood made the ruling while dismissing a lawsuit from a University of Kentucky student seeking to halt his school from conducting a third sexual assault hearing against him (for the same allegations). While it is bad for the accused student to have his lawsuit dismissed, the note from the judge in this case may help other students in the future.
The student, using the pseudonym John Doe, had already gone through two hearings before facing the third. In the first hearing, he was initially found responsible for sexual misconduct, but a university appeals board overturned the ruling, finding Doe’s due process rights had been violated, as well as the Code of Student Conduct. The appeals board also ruled that a campus investigator withheld “critical evidence and witness questions” from the hearing panel.
A second hearing was ordered. The second hearing again found Doe responsible, and sentenced him to a five-year suspension. Doe appealed, and the appeals board again overturned the ruling based on due process violations. A third hearing was ordered, which prompted Doe’s lawsuit.
Hood denied Doe his request to halt the hearing, citing Younger v. Harris, which established a legal doctrine that requires federal courts to abstain from interfering in state judicial proceedings.
“Pursuant to Younger, this Court should abstain where “there are state proceedings that are (1) currently pending; (2) involve an important state interest; and (3) will provide the federal plaintiff with an adequate opportunity to raise his or her constitutional claims,” Hood wrote.
Hood had to determine whether the campus hearing constituted “state proceedings,” and he determined that to be the case. Because UK is “an arm of the Commonwealth of Kentucky” and had many due process procedures found in criminal court, “the adjudicatory hearing is both ‘quasi-judicial’ and ‘quasi-criminal.'”
UK provided Doe more due process rights than most colleges and universities do for accused students. Doe was able to have an attorney assist him in the proceedings and was able to cross-examine witnesses, two things absent at most schools. Because of this and other procedural protections, Hood made his determination.
Hearing number three will not necessarily turn out any differently for Doe. But for other accused students, this ruling might help establish a helpful precedent. A determination that campus hearings are “quasi-criminal” state actions would require them to provide due process rights. Of course, as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education notes, such a ruling might not apply to campus disciplinary procedures that currently contain far fewer due process protections, such as those at schools that use the “single investigator” model.
“[C]ertainly, a university should not be able to escape the moral obligations that accompany trying someone for a serious offense like sexual assault simply by making its procedures less like an actual criminal proceeding and more like a kangaroo court,” wrote FIRE’s director of Policy Research Samantha Harris.
But this ruling, along with other judges who have found campus proceedings “unfair” or to have inappropriately shifted the burden of proof to put it upon the accused, should signal to activists and lawmakers that the current regime will not last.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
