By Gary Chester, Senior Writer
December 30, 2021 was the height of Mel Tucker’s collegiate coaching career. His Michigan State Spartans defeated Pitt in the Peach Bowl and completed an 11-2 season to earn a number eight ranking nationally. Remarkably, it was Tucker’s first full season as head coach. It was also fortunate for MSU that it had found the right man for the job so quickly after the demise of Mark Dantonio, who had led the Spartans for 13 years before abruptly resigning under the weight of alleged NCAA violations.
TV commentators and scribes pronounced the Tucker-MSU bond as a perfect marriage. But to borrow from ESPN’s Lee Corso, not so fast my friends. On September 10, 2023, MSU suspended Tucker in the wake of sexual harassment allegations; he would be terminated “for cause”—without the benefit of a hearing—17 days later. The resulting wrongful termination litigation sheds an unflattering light on intercollegiate sports, promises to spur discourse on Title IX procedures, and will test the application of moral turpitude provisions in sports contracts.
In the Complaint filed in Tucker v. Michigan State University, et als., Case No. 1:24-cv-795 (W.D. Mich. 2024), the former coach recited a sordid history of MSU’s handling of alleged sexual harassment cases. Named as defendants are MSU, the MSU Board of Trustees, Interim President Teresa K. Woodruff, Athletic Director Alan Haller, General Counsel Brian Quinn, and eight individual Trustees. There are nine causes of action sounding in due process, contract, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil rights.
Tucker filed the Complaint on July 31, 2024. MSU subsequently filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, which is pending.
An Embarrassing Factual Background
In February 2020, MSU signed Tucker to a six-year contract valued at $5.5 million per year. After a successful 2021 season, MSU extended Tucker’s contract to ten years at approximately $9.5 million annually. The agreement contained a provision authorizing MSU to terminate Tucker for engaging in “any conduct which constitutes moral turpitude or which, in the University’s reasonable judgment, would tend to bring public disrespect, contempt, or ridicule upon the University.” The termination clause required MSU to provide Tucker with written notice of the grounds of any proposed termination, and an opportunity for Tucker to present his position to the Athletic Director and the University President.
The genesis of Tucker’s downfall stemmed from off campus conduct only tangentially related to the MSU football program. According to the Complaint, on August 14, 2021, an independent contractor, Brenda Tracy, presented a seminar to the football team. Tracy is the founder of a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending sexual and interpersonal violence, and her program concerned sexual misconduct prevention. Following Tracy’s visit to MSU, Tucker and Tracy began a deep personal relationship. Tucker was married, but he had been estranged and essentially separated from his wife for years.
Evidence showed that Tracy was interested in having Tucker fund her business. However, the relationship ended in August 2022, when Tucker became concerned that Tracy and/or her assistant were making false statements about Tucker’s marriage. In November 2022, Tracy complained to MSU attorney Quinn that Tucker had sexually harassed her. Tracy sought a quick monetary settlement without a full investigation.
MSU instructed Tracy that it would not pay a speedy settlement. Anxious to keep the matter quiet, MSU advised Tracy to file a confidential claim. Tracy filed a claim under MSU’s confidential claim policy in December 2022. Tracy alleged that Tucker made unwanted comments of a sexual nature during their phone calls and, during an April 28, 2022 phone conversation, he masturbated against her consent and made inappropriate comments.
In his response, Tucker said that MSU did not have jurisdiction by its own rules because the matter had no connection to the MSU campus. He denied making unwanted comments and characterized the April 28 phone call as consensual “phone sex.” He argued that the phone call was 36 minutes long, that Tracy sent him a provocative photo of herself during the call, and that she could have easily ended the call but did not.
Tucker also alleged that Tracy did not disclose certain relevant information to MSU during its investigation, including a text message sent 11 days before she filed the complaint which stated that she “was down to $5.”
MSU allegedly retained jurisdiction over Tracy’s claim because it wanted a reason to terminate Tucker’s employment. Tucker asserted that the University violated his right to cross-examine his accuser, failed to pursue key evidence adverse to Tracy, and allowed Tracy to submit certain text messages and emails she had “cherry-picked for production without requiring Tracy to produce her full set of electronic communications with others…”
Although the process called for confidentiality, the investigation into Tucker was leaked to the press. In September 2023, MSU hired an outside law firm to investigate the source of the leak, and it concluded that Tracy had communicated some information to multiple media outlets. Tucker alleged that he had asked MSU on August 2, 2023 and August 25, 2023 to investigate the leaks, but MSU ignored his requests and later initiated an investigation only after Tracy complained.
MSU Terminates Tucker for Acts of Moral Turpitude
On September 10, 2023, USA Today published an article titled, “Michigan State Football Coach Mel Tucker Accused of Sexually Harassing a Rape Survivor.” The article disclosed that Tracy had shared more than 1,200 pages of case documents with the USA Today reporter and that she had agreed to allow the reporter to identify her by name. The article assailed MSU for missing repeated chances to stop a prolific sexual abuser, stating: “For nearly two decades, Michigan State leaders failed to act on complaints against Larry Nassar, the disgraced former U.S.A. Gymnastics and campus physician accused of sexually assaulting more than 300 female athletes…”
MSU immediately announced that it was suspending Tucker without pay. It claimed that new developments had come to light. Defendants Haller and Woodruff told the media that the investigation was incomplete and would not be complete until there was a hearing and a final decision.
USA Today published a subsequent article titled, “In the Michigan State story, Brenda Tracy is the believable one. Not coach Mel Tucker.” It was disclosed that the author had known Tracy for several years.
Despite MSU’s promise of a hearing, Haller sent Tucker a letter on September 18, 2023 notifying him that the University intended to terminate him as head coach based on the moral turpitude clause in his contract. MSU contended that there was undisputed evidence that Tucker engaged in conduct “involving moral turpitude” or that would “tend to bring public disrespect, contempt, or ridicule upon the University.”
Tucker’s attorney replied with a detailed letter stating that Tucker disputed the evidence and that MSU had violated the investigation process by not providing a hearing. He asserted that Tracy had no ongoing work relationship with MSU, the participants were consenting adults, and the conduct did not constitute moral turpitude. Two days later, MSU formally terminated Tucker’s $95 million contract.
Tucker alleged that MSU subsequently scheduled a hearing that was an “after-the-fact window dressing designed to provide cover for Defendants’ illegal termination of Plaintiff.” At that time, Tucker’s attorney obtained communications that Tracy had previously failed to disclose. Some of the communications were text messages from Tracy to her assistant that cast doubt on some of Tracy’s allegations.
Critically, a new witness came forward and provided an affidavit indicating that the sexual conduct that occurred during the April 28, 2022 phone call was fully consensual. Tucker’s attorney sent a letter to Quinn’s law firm and all the members of the MSU Board of Trustees on October 5 2023, summarizing the new evidence that squared with Tucker’s position. Tucker’s attorney asked for the matter to be delayed so the hearing officer could receive and consider the additional text messages. None of the Defendants responded, and MSU proceeded with a hearing.
MSU’s Alleged Motivation to Fire Tucker
According to the Complaint, MSU leadership “routinely engaged in serious acts of misconduct, including manipulating and interfering with the University’s supposedly independent administrative investigation processes—the same processes that the Defendants misused and weaponized against Plaintiff.” It began with a decades-long pattern of sexual abuse of female student athletes perpetrated by the disgraced MSU Athletics Department physician Larry Nassar.
MSU failed to act against Nassar despite complaints brought against him from hundreds of students and members of the U.S. gymnastics team dating back to 1997. MSU waited until 2016 to terminate Nassar’s employment. In 2017 and early 2018, Nassar was found guilty of multiple counts of sexual abuse in separate cases and was sentenced to over 100 years in prison. On May 16, 2018, MSU reached a $500 million settlement with 332 of Nassar’s victims.
The Nassar scandal forced President Lou Anna K. Simon and Athletic Director Mark Hollis to resign. Additional administration and staff left under pressure after Nassar was convicted and sentenced.
On the same day that Hollis resigned, another shoe dropped on MSU. ESPN posted a report in its online magazine, Outside the Lines (OTL), stating that football coach Mark Dantonio and basketball coach Tom Izzo led programs that were replete with sex-based incidents. OTL reported that at least 16 MSU football players were accused of sexual assault or violence against women. Dantonio was reportedly involved in handling the discipline in at least one case.
When stories surfaced that Dantonio had knowingly engaged in recruiting violations, he resigned on February 3, 2020. But MSU permitted Dantonio to continue as an advisor. He was allowed to retain a $4.3 million bonus that MSU had paid him a few weeks earlier based on his anticipated future work as head coach. On September 10, 2023, MSU rehired Dantonio as an associate head coach of the football team. (He supports coaches from the sidelines or the booth and sits on the College Football Playoff Selection Committee.)
OTL also reported that a former undergraduate student-assistant coach for Izzo was permitted to continue coaching after he had been criminally charged for punching a female MSU student in her face at a bar in 2010. A few months later, the same assistant was accused of sexually assaulting a different female student. (In 2017, Izzo reportedly violated procedure in a sexual assault case against one of his players when he contacted a student witness before police and university investigators spoke with the witness.)
MSU allegedly conducted an unauthorized and flawed investigation against Tucker to maintain control over the matter and keep it from the public. It then “manipulated the process to create a pretextual and false basis to terminate Plaintiff’s employment and evade Defendant’s significant financial obligation to Plaintiff, which, at the time, was more than $80 million.” The Trustees allegedly terminated Tucker to preserve their positions and public image, and because of his race. The Complaint draws a distinction between MSU’s treatment of Dantonio and Izzo, who are white, and Tucker, who is black.
Investigations Abound
In 2018, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) began investigating MSU’s Title IX compliance. The OCR report published in 2019 was highly critical of the University, citing mishandling of sexual harassment complaints at the highest levels. Simon’s successor as MSU President, Samuel Stanley, Jr., resigned in 2022, citing severe dysfunction within the Board of Trustees. Among other things, the Board had failed to properly oversee the school’s sexual harassment investigation procedures.
The OCR opened a second investigation only weeks after Stanley resigned. This coincided with Tracy notifying MSU of her allegations against Tucker. In 2023, matters worsened for MSU when an outside law firm hired to investigate the University Office for Institutional Equity (OIE) issued a scathing critique of MSU’s dismissal of the dean of the business school. The OIE—the same department overseeing the Tucker case—failed to properly supervise Haller and Quinn’s improper investigation and eventual termination of the dean. Haller and Quinn were handling the investigation of Tucker.
A second independent investigation was equally critical of MSU leadership. The report claimed that three MSU Trustees improperly reached out to Tracy during the investigation. The report also revealed fighting among the Trustees to the extent that some made false statements about certain Trustees and administrators to student groups and fellow Trustees.
Moral Turpitude Clauses are Generally Enforceable
In a motion to dismiss the complaint filed in October 2024, MSU argued that Tucker’s claims are barred by federal and state immunities. The University argued that Tucker filed a “kitchen-sink complaint” to turn a “meritless breach-of-contract claim into an $80 million dollar conspiracy.”
Two days after MSU filed the motion, District Court Judge Paul L. Mahoney gave Tucker the opportunity to cure any alleged inadequacies in his pleadings. Tucker filed an Amended Complaint and MSU filed another motion to dismiss, which has yet to be decided. The central issue is whether Tucker’s conduct would tend to bring “public disrespect, contempt, or ridicule upon the University.”
Moral turpitude clauses have long been held valid and enforceable, as the Second Circuit noted in Nader v. ABC Television, Inc., 150 Fed. Appx. 54, 56 (2d Cir. 2005). There, the court found that a DUI arrest constituted a valid basis for a television network to terminate the employment of an actor because the arrest generated adverse publicity. The court did not need to consider whether a conviction would be necessary for the morals clause to apply.
The court in Nader made it clear that employers must act in good faith when they invoke a morals clause. Once good faith is established, the burden shifts to the employee to adduce evidence that the employer’s stated reason for termination was pretextual and that the real reason was discriminatory. The opinion referenced Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133 (2000), where the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated a jury verdict of improper termination of employment because the plaintiff had presented evidence of discrimination to refute the employer’s claimed reason for termination.
A sports case where the terminating party may have acted in bad faith was Mendenhall v. Hanesbrands, Inc., Case No. 1:2011-cv-570 (M.D.N.C. 2012), where the Pittsburgh Steelers running back Robert Mendenhall sued the parent company of Champion sports apparel for improperly invoking a morals clause to terminate a products endorsement agreement. When the U.S. announced that it had killed Osama bin Laden, Mendenhall posted social media messages that challenged the justification for the assassination and suggested that 9/11 was a hoax. The company immediately terminated Mendenhall.
The trial court denied Hanesbrands’s motion to dismiss because the company had failed to consider some positive responses to Mendenhall’s remarks. Whether Mendenhall’s comments reflected poorly on the business was an issue of fact. The parties settled prior to trial.
Coaches Behaving Badly
In college sports, courts have tended to side with the employer when a coach’s conduct arguably affected the reputation of the university or the functioning of the team. One example is Haywood v. University of Pittsburgh, 976 F. Supp. 606, (W.D. Penn. 2013), where Pitt fired its football coach, Michael Haywood, for acts of moral turpitude. Haywood was arrested and charged for a domestic incident where he forced his way into a residence to confront the mother of his child. After learning of the arrest in the media, the university immediately terminated Haywood’s contract because his conduct was prejudicial to the best interests of the school and its athletics program. Haywood said he had entered the residence through a barricaded door, which the trial court ruled was sufficient cause for Pitt to terminate his coaching contract.
There are several cases in which universities seemed justified in terminating highly visible head coaches. The moral turpitude clauses were never litigated, but the coaches’ conduct reflected poorly on the institutions of which they were a visible part. A prime example was the Washington State football coach Mike Price, who led the Cougars to two Rose Bowls during his tenure in Pullman from 1989 to 2002. The University of Alabama was searching for a new head coach and agreed to a seven-year, $10 million deal with Price in December 2002. The school made its decision after a brief two-week search.
Only five months later, Alabama fired Price after someone posted a message on the Auburn University booster club website suggesting that Price had engaged in improper conduct while participating in a celebrity pro-am golf tournament in Florida. A few weeks later, Sports Illustrated reported that Price, who was married, had acted inappropriately at a strip club and had spent the night in his hotel room with two women whom he had propositioned. One of them had used Price’s credit card to purchase nearly $1,000 worth of food from room service without his knowledge.
SI also reported that Price had propositioned some female students at a bar in Tuscaloosa shortly after he was hired. The athletic director reportedly had already chastised him twice for spending time buying drinks for students and “generally serving as the life of the party in too many bars.” University President Robert Witt announced that Alabama was dismissing Price for failing to live his “personal and professional life in a manner consistent with university policies.” Price responded with a lawsuit for breach of contract, violation of due process, wrongful termination, and fraud.
In Price v. University of Alabama, 318 F. Supp. 2d 1084 (N.D. Ala. 2003), the trial court dismissed all four claims. There was no interpretation of any morals clause because no written contract had been finalized and signed. Price settled a separate defamation case against SI’s parent company for an undisclosed amount. Despite Price’s misconduct, UTEP hired him as its head coach in December 2003.
The University of Arkansas fired its football coach, Bobby Petrino, for cause in 2012. Petrino was married, but he was in a relationship with a 25-year-old assistant who was a former Arkansas volleyball player hired by Petrino. When Petrino was in a serious motorcycle accident with the assistant as passenger, he lied about her being on the motorcycle. When Arkansas fired Petrino for unfairly hiring his mistress and misleading the University and the public about the accident, the athletic director cited a contract provision permitting termination for conduct that negatively affects the reputation of the University’s athletics programs. Petrino went on to coach at several colleges, including a head-scratching return to Arkansas in 2024 and 2025.
Former University of Mississippi head football coach Hugh Freeze resigned in 2017 after it was reported that he had contacted an escort service on multiple occasions. The University said it would have exercised the moral turpitude clause to terminate Freeze for cause had he not resigned. Auburn hired Freeze as head coach starting in 2023 but fired him during the 2025 season.
The University of Michigan fired head football coach Sherrone Moore for cause on December 10, 2025, after evidence surfaced of an inappropriate relationship with a member of his staff. Hours later, police arrested Moore after responding to an alleged assault. Moore was arraigned on charges of felony home invasion, misdemeanor stalking, and entering without permission. The school issued a statement the following day saying that Moore’s conduct violated University policy and “U-M maintains zero tolerance for such behavior.”
The assistant prosecutor alleged during the arraignment that Moore had made several “intimidating” and “terrifying” statements while breaking into a woman’s home, following her breaking up with him. The responding police department had previously stated that the incident “does not appear to be random in nature.” The University did not cite a morals clause, but it seems doubtful that Moore will raise a legal challenge under the circumstances. Criminal conviction is not a prerequisite for termination of employment.
These cases suggest a low threshold for morals clauses to apply. A contrary case is O’Brien v. Ohio State University, 2007 Ohio 4833, (Ohio App. 2007), where Ohio State fired highly successful men’s basketball coach Jim O’Brien after it was revealed that he loaned $6,000 to a Serbian basketball recruit in 1998. O’Brien argued that it was a humanitarian gesture because the player was a professional who was ineligible to play under NCAA rules. However, the player sought reinstatement from the NCAA. (The player was eventually chosen in the NBA draft.)
The trial judge ruled that the improper loan was not a material breach of contract and that the contract unambiguously set forth the damages for breach of contract. The court awarded O’Brien nearly $2.5 million and Ohio State appealed. The appeals court rejected the University’s position that its damages were substantial because it placed itself on a one-year ban from postseason tournament play and gave up two basketball scholarships. The appellate panel found that the harm was insubstantial and the breach was not material. (A dissenting judge noted that O’Brien had deprived Ohio State of the trust it had a right to expect and that the damage was incurable.)
A Lose-Lose Case for MSU
Employers are not empowered to terminate employees for personal conduct they find distasteful. They may terminate employees who engage in immoral acts which adversely affect their ability to perform their job. If Tucker’s conduct in the 34-minute phone call was consensual, then Michigan State likely had no right to terminate his employment. However, if Tucker sexually harassed Tracy, then the University had a right to invoke the morals clause. The nature of their relationship would appear to be an issue for the trier of fact.
Tucker v. Michigan State presents multiple problems for the school. First, even if a jury were to find that the conduct was nonconsensual, Tucker could still prove that it was a pretext for his dismissal. He claims the true reason was to obscure MSU’s mishandling of the matter. There is also the disparate treatment he received in contrast to Michigan State’s handling of Dantonio and Izzo. Even if MSU treated the white coaches more favorably because of their long-term success, the appearance on the surface that MSU handled Tucker differently because he is black severely diminishes the University’s reputation. It also raises eyebrows as to why an educational institution would continue to employ Dantonio and Izzo despite a wave of sexual harassment claims against players they recruited and coached.
Second, even if Tucker’s termination is upheld under the applicable morals clause, it would not excuse MSU’s misconduct. The University allegedly had no right to litigate an off-campus matter. To compound this poor judgment, the University may not have conducted a fair hearing. Further, MSU appeared to have rewarded Tracy’s breach of confidentiality, though Tracy claimed that the University also violated the confidentiality of the investigation, as discussed below.
Finally, the episode reflects poorly on those who govern an institution with nearly 52,000 students and approximately 12,000 employees. ESPN’s reporting, the Nassar scandal, and the basic facts in Tucker v. Michigan State reflect that MSU has been indifferent to proper Title IX procedures and indifferent to the students and others for whom Title IX protections exist.
Tracy Files a Claim Against MSU
The matter became even messier for Michigan State last year when Tracy filed a lawsuit against the Board of Trustees and two individual Trustees. In Tracy v. Board of Trustees of Michigan State University, et al., No. 1:25-cv-614 (W.D. Mich. 2025), Tracy asserted that her relationship with Tucker was strictly professional, and that the OIE breached statutory and other duties when it mishandled her complaint. She alleged that MSU violated its own rules when it leaked details of the investigation to Crain’s Detroit Business and another media outlet. Tracy claimed that she had spoken with USA Today on the condition that it would not publish the story without her permission, and that she consented to publication only because Crain’s would have otherwise published MSU’s version first.
Tracy also alleged that Tucker violated University policy when he deleted his electronic communications during the OIE investigation. Tracy seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the resulting damage to her business and for an onslaught of threats directed against her.
While Michigan State may be a poster child for institutional failure to adequately investigate and litigate sexual harassment claims, it has plenty of company. Any list of colleges that have fallen short in their Title IX obligations to victims and accused individuals would be exhaustive. As Noah Bloomberg observed in a 2025 article in the Mississippi College Law Review (Vol. 42, Issue 1) titled “College Courts: Administrative Abuse of Title IX and its Consequences,” the increasing number of Title IX sexual misconduct complaints and the failure to fairly investigate and decide them has become a political issue.
Bloomberg criticized both the Obama and Trump administration for policies that “paved a road to hell with good intentions.” He wrote that the Obama OCR forced unfair disciplinary proceedings on accused students and the Trump OCR forced universities to create quasi-courts that make the process too intimidating, laborious, and expensive.
The history of mistakes at Michigan State highlights some of the conflicts of interest that are inherent when an institution is tasked with investigating and punishing a prominent member of its community. Any adverse publicity may harm the school’s reputation and, as a result, its private funding. The pressure on trustees and administrators to avoid scandal and to preserve their positions, and the reputation of the university, is self-evident. Even when criminal complaints are filed, prosecutors who are alumni of the colleges where the conduct took place may view the accusations with a jaundiced eye, as OTL made clear in its reporting.
A Better Way?
Tucker’s Complaint shrewdly attempts to turn the tables on Michigan State by suggesting that its improper handling of Tracy’s claim put it in no position to judge the coach’s conduct. It suggests the legal maxim, “He that seeks equity must do equity.” It also takes the case beyond a simple interpretation of a morals clause in raising broad Title IX procedural issues.
The mishandling of sexual harassment claims at Michigan State and elsewhere has long suggested a need for reform. Perhaps independent law firms and arbitrators are better suited than university administrators to investigate and decide Title IX sexual harassment claims. They could be selected and funded by the individual states, which would preserve their independence. The OCR guidelines on hearings could be more generalized and less politics-driven, so that the attorneys and arbitrators would have a degree of flexibility.
Until a more satisfactory process is put into place, sexual harassment victims have a choice of filing a Title IX complaint or a criminal complaint. The flaws in Title IX procedures may have motivated the accuser in the Moore case to pursue criminal charges against the coach instead of filing a Title IX claim.
In the meantime, universities need to adhere to the procedures they have in place and make reasonable determinations. They should not act hastily by dismissing coaches and other employees for acts of moral turpitude that have not been established. (Temporary suspension with pay is one option.) Courts have interpreted moral turpitude clauses liberally, but the Tucker case presents novel issues. It will be interesting to see whether the trial court grants MSU’s motion to dismiss on the basis that an ongoing Title IX investigation was sufficient cause to terminate Tucker’s employment, or if it allows the case to continue because a jury could find that Tracy’s accusations alone were not enough.
