Miltenberg: “Men are Banding Together Class Action Lawsuits Against Discrimination Title IX,” Inside Higher Ed

12.18.19

A lawsuit filed by attorney Andrew Miltenberg has recently made national headlines. This Title IX lawsuit relies on a class-action theory to address the grievances of an increasingly visible and numerous class of victims: men in higher education. Hundreds of lawsuits already seek justice on behalf of accused male students in federal courts. Title IX for All, an online archive, currently tracks around 500 such suits, many of which have led to favorable rulings … Miltenberg is a legal pioneer who has won groundbreaking victories before the Second and Seventh Circuit Courts of Appeals. The Second Circuit decision, Doe v. Columbia University, is significant for prohibiting institutions from engaging in discrimination against men even for a short period of time and even in the absence of overt malice. The precedent Miltenberg won before the Seventh Circuit, Doe v. Purdue University, is no less significant because it relies on a “sex stereotyping” theory under which most (if not all) institutions in the nation would fail to comply with Title IX. Specifically, the Seventh Circuit found it intolerable that Purdue University would “blame men as a class for the problem of campus sexual assault.” Is it a radical notion that most American colleges engage in rampant discrimination against men? Hardly so. The lack of due process in Title IX tribunals has received widespread and bipartisan criticism in recent years from legal and academic experts. Critics include the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the National Association of Scholars, former California governor Edmund Brown Jr., the NCHERM group, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the American College of Trial Lawyers and others. Various coalition letters have also condemned the unfair application of Title IX to sexual harassment disputes, eliciting hundreds of signatures on multiple occasions.

Click to view article