A federal judge from the Western District of North Carolina delivered a mixed ruling to Appalachian State University on its motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a former football player against the school after he was dismissed from the team after being accused of raping another student.
The court let stand, for the moment, the plaintiff’s procedural due process and equal protection claims, while dismissing his claim that the defendants violated Title IX.
Plaintiff Lanston Tanyi, an African-American male, was enrolled at Appalachian State University on a football scholarship in the fall of 2008. On September 14, 2011, he attended an off-campus party where alcohol was served. According to Tanyi, he and his roommate went into an upstairs bedroom with a fellow student and the trio had consensual sex.
In September of 2011, Tanyi learned that he was being charged with various violations of the student code of conduct, stemming from rape allegations.
The next month, two of the administrators who are individual defendants in the case “assigned Tanyi a philosophy graduate student with no legal expertise as his defense counsel,” according to the court. Meanwhile, his accuser was assigned a licensed attorney. The plaintiff would later learn that the individual defendants knew of two witness that could corroborate his story, but were never introduced. In addition, Tanyi became aware “for the first time that his roommate had prior disciplinary violations, and later discovered that one of the jurors on the hearing panel had decided an earlier case against his roommate.”
Tanyi, ultimately obtained some relief through the appeals process, but he was never allowed to rejoin the football team. Tanyi graduated from Appalachian State in the summer of 2012. He enrolled in a graduate program at Colorado State University and used his final year of football eligibility at Colorado State. Tanyi was not drafted by any NFL team, and is not currently on any NFL roster. Tanyi brought this suit on February 24, 2015, alleging violations of his Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process, substantive due process, and equal protection rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, as well as gender discrimination in violation of 20 U.S.C. § 1681.
The defendants moved to dismiss, leading to the instant opinion.
In considering the arguments for and against the Section 1983 Procedural Due Process Claim, the court let stand the plaintiff’s allegations centered on a rehearing that was given to the alleged victim and the inadequate notice he was given about the alleged victim’s new harassment charge.
As for the Section 1983 Substantive Due Process Claim, the court first noted that Tanyi “must demonstrate” that the administrator’s grant of the alleged victim’s appeal “amounted to an arbitrary abuse of executive power so egregious that it ‘shocks the conscience.’ Cnty. Of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 846, 118 S. Ct. 1708, 140 L. Ed. 2d 1043 (1998).”
The court conceded that “it is not the role of the federal courts to set aside decisions of school administrators…lacking a basis in wisdom or compassion.” The exception is if the decision is “so extreme as to violate due process.” Wood v. Strickland, 420 U.S. 308, 326, 95 S. Ct. 992, 43 L. Ed. 2d 214 (1975); Board of Education v. McCluskey, 458 U.S. 966, 970, 102 S. Ct. 3469, 73 L. Ed. 2d 1273 (1982). Thus, the court agreed with the plaintiff that the defendant’s action was “arbitrary, and motivated by bad faith. As a result, Tanyi’s substantive due process claim will survive the defendant’s motion to dismiss.”
Turning to the Section 1983 Equal Protection Claim, the court found that the plaintiff’s pleading lacked the requisite specificity and should be dismissed.
The last allegation of note was the plaintiff’s 20 U.S.C. § 1681, or Title IX Claim. In its analysis, the court zeroed in on Wells v. Xavier University, a case in which a male student’s Title IX claim survived a 12(b) (6) motion to dismiss. (Doc. 34, p. 24; 7 F. Supp. 3d 746 (S.D. Ohio, 2014)). In Wells, “the plaintiff claimed he was scapegoated by the Xavier administration, which was already under fire for mishandling two previous sexual assault claims against male students, ‘because he was a male accused of sexual assault.’” Wells, 7 F. Supp. 3d at 751 (2014). However, as the Southern District of New York noted in Doe, “that sort of subjective belief, devoid of factual support, is plainly insufficient after Iqbal and Twombly.” 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52370, 2015 WL 1840402, (S.D.N.Y. 2015). Accordingly, the court declined to follow the Wells ruling,” effectively ending the Title IX claim.
Lanston Tanyi v. Appalachian State University et al.; W.D.N.C.; CIVIL ACTION NO. 5:14-CV-170RLV, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95577; 7/22/15
Attorneys of Record: (for plaintiff) S. Luke Largess, Tin, Fulton, Walker & Owen, Charlotte, NC. (for defendants) Laura Howard McHenry, Stephanie Ann Brennan, LEAD ATTORNEYS, NC Department of Justice, Raleigh, NC.
