Court Reinstates Suit Alleging Sex Bias in Title IX Inquiry

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed an order by a district court dismissing a suit brought by a Chinese graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, who alleged the university discriminated against him based on sex in the course of a Title IX disciplinary investigation after a former student accused him of misconduct.

In a Jan. 11 ruling in favor of the student, identified as John Doe, the three-judge panel “concluded that Doe’s allegations of external pressures impacting how the university handled sexual misconduct complaints, an internal pattern and practice of bias in the University of California and at UCLA in particular, and specific instances of bias in Doe’s particular disciplinary case, when combined, raised a plausible inference of discrimination on the basis of sex sufficient to withstand dismissal.”