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A federal appeals court on Friday reinstated a professor's lawsuit alleging that the University of New England retaliated against her for filing sexual harassment complaints against her department chair and supervisor.
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit overturned a 2016 ruling in which a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Lara A. Carlson, now an associate professor in the university's Westbrook College of Health Professions. Carlson had complained that her chair, Paul Visich, engaged in inappropriate touching and other forms of sexual harassment, which the appeals court said that officials at the Maine university acknowledged.
She filed the lawsuit in 2016, alleging that New England officials misled her into leaving the exercise physiology department to avoid having to report to Visich, which ultimately caused her to forfeit many of her teaching assignments and other duties. The appeals court ruled that the lower court had erred in concluding that the transfer could not have been an adverse action because it was voluntary, and ordered the lower court to hear arguments on that question.
