By Clare Maness
America’s pastime is a beautiful thing, but as scholars have increasingly admonished (Koller, 2025; Warner & Knoester, 2025), sports as a whole are not without their warts. And a few weeks ago, possible sporting warts became public when, on August 19, 2025, Dean Brown, a former student-athlete at Central Michigan University (CMU), filed suit against CMU (or really, against the school’s board of trustees (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, answer p. 1)), the school’s athletic director, and two of the school’s baseball coaches (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025). As the complaint lays it out, assistant CMU baseball coach Aaron Hilt punched Brown in the chest, with no provocation. Brown alleges that CMU’s personnel had dismissed parental and student concerns about Hilt, and that after the assault, rather than disciplining Hilt, the school actively worked to conceal the assault, ultimately dismissing Brown’s reports, despite corroboration from eyewitnesses who confirmed the details of the assault and that it occurred “out of the blue” (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, compl. p. 3). Instead of protecting its student-athlete, Brown claims, the university retaliated against Brown because Brown had spoken out. The school suspended Brown indefinitely from the CMU baseball team. Brown has described himself to the court as “displaced” from his life’s work as an athlete (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, compl. p. 3). Since the incident, he has transferred to another school. Hilt, in the meantime, as remained at CMU. And the case has attracted some national media attention (Wethington, 2025).
Brown’s claims include assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (including First Amendment and substantive-due-process claims), negligence, and negligent hiring and retention. He is seeking compensatory damages, damages for physical and emotional distress, exemplary damages, punitive damages, attorney fees and costs, and any other damages appropriate to the matter. The lawsuit originates from an incident that arose on March 2, 2025, when CMU’s baseball team was playing the last game of a four-game series against Western Kentucky University. Participating in team camaraderie, Brown expected to fist bump his coach, Hilt, but instead, “Hilt wound up and closed-fist punched Dean in the chest with significant force, which knocked the wind out of Dean, who fell backwards” (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, compl. p. 7). Teammates reacted with displays of “visible and audible confusion and concern” (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, compl. p. 7). Apparently, “Hilt had a reputation of excessive drinking and reckless behavior, making this incident one of many that made him viewed poorly in the eyes of many of the pitchers and other players on the team” (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, compl. p. 7). It seems “Hilt was known for having slept on the baseball field during a period of significant intoxication” (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, compl. p. 7). After the incident, the team exchanged messages, GIFs, and memes referring to the episode, and shared photos related to it in a group chat on Snapchat.
Brown raised the issue with the head coach and then met with Hilt. Brown’s complaint alleges that Hilt attempted to downplay the whole incident. Hilt went so far as even reaching out to Brown’s parents. For his part, Brown reached out to the athletic director to no avail. Instead, after Brown pitched in a game on March 19, 2025, he found himself benched. Before that point, Brown had always pitched in game series. As he explained to the court, his teammates had voted him the hardest worker, and he had demonstrated a strong work ethic and leadership skills. The lack of playing opportunities after the incident did not reflect his contributions to the team. Things then started going awry with teammates, and Brown found himself suspended from a game and then from the team, in, as Brown put it to the court, retaliation for his efforts to report the incident involving Hilt. Someone removed Brown from the NIL Club, a fan-led, athlete-run community in which student-athletes shared content and earned income through fan subscriptions. By mid-August of this year, however, no one had actually told Brown anything regarding his status on the CMU baseball team. Since these incidents occurred, Brown has transferred to a community college and has lost his status as a Division 1 baseball player (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025).
In response to Brown’s complaint, the defendants filed their answer on September 4, 2025. They describe Hilt’s gesture toward Brown as “an innocuous ‘fist bump’ to his [Brown’s] pectoral muscle” that occurred during a team-building exercise (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, answer p. 2). They explicitly claimed, “Nothing was bruised other than Plaintiff’s extremely delicate ego because he wrongly believed that he had been singled out by Coach Hilt” (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, answer p. 2). Unsurprisingly, they deny any cover up or retaliation. They have described Brown as an athlete who was frequently late to or absent from meetings and practices, and they claim he missed academic appointments and had a GPA of 1.9. Claiming Brown was on the verge of quitting baseball and school in March of 2025, they described him as a walk-on player who was “failing most of his courses” and who did not have “a scholarship or a meaningful work ethic” (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, answer p. 3). Regarding Hilt, they have described him as being the subject of a dishonest effort to impugn his character and try to “make a few dollars” off that effort (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, answer p. 4).
In relation to jurisdiction, the defendants are disputing federal jurisdiction, but they are not contesting venue in the Eastern District of Michigan (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025). They have stated that some of Brown’s allegations are knowingly false. They deny Hilt punched Brown, but they “admit that it is common practice within most baseball teams that players and coaches fist bump and use other physical gestures” (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, answer p. 29). For affirmative defenses, the defendants have provided a litany, variously raising sovereign immunity and the Eleventh Amendment; governmental immunity and “other immunities provided by law” (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025, answer p. 35); potential notice issues; qualified immunity; laches, waiver, unclean hands; failure to state a claim for prospective or injunctive relief that may be granted; action within the bounds of good faith and legitimate reasoning; a lack of violation of substantive-due-process rights; appropriate remedial action; failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted; good faith and action within the scope of employment; and the plaintiff’s failure to mitigate damages. They have also denied personhood for the school and its board of trustees under § 1983 (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025). An exhibit to the answer features an incident report from the April 19, 2025 police involvement with alleged threats related to case.
After receiving the defendant’s answer, the court ordered the parties to submit material for a case-management order by September 29, 2025. This material will include the basics: a brief case summary, an outline of proposed discovery, a description of outstanding or anticipated discovery disputes, disclosures of insurance, and proposals for a case-management plan (Brown v. Central Michigan University, 2025). Finally, the court directed counsel to discuss facilitative mediation and case evaluation with their clients. The case is assigned to the Honorable Thomas L. Ludington, a George W. Bush nominee. The Eastern District of Michigan ranks in about the middle (48th) of the 94 U.S. judicial districts when it comes to the percentage of civil cases that have been in the system longer than three years—for the Eastern District, that number was about 10% in 2024 (Cox, 2024). The median number of months to reach a civil disposition in the district was about eight in 2024 (Cox, 2024). Given these statistics, court watchers may be seeing some sort of disposition here in the not-terribly-distant future.
References
Brown v. Central Michigan University, No. 1:25-CV-12575 (E.D. Mich. 2025).
Cox, S. F. (2024). U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan: 2024 annual report,
presented at the State of the Court Luncheon September 25, 2024. https://www.mied.uscourts.gov/PDFFIles/2024_Annual_Report_Combined.pdf
Koller, D. (2025). More than play: How law, policy, and politics shape American youth sport.
University of California Press.
Warner M., & Knoester, C. (2025). Sports-related mistreatment in the U.S.: Retrospective
recognitions and connections to social structural locations, childhood contexts, and adult characteristics. International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, 8, 211–240. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41978-025-00176-6
Wethington, P. (2025, August 20). Former Central Michigan University baseball player sues
school, claims he was punched by coach. CBA News. https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/former-central-michigan-university-baseball-player-claims-he-was-punched-by-coach/
