Attorneys at the Women’s Law Project and Public Justice filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in a Title IX case called Hall v. Millersville University.
Our brief supporting Hall argues that an educational institution, in this case Millersville University, violates Title IX for failure to respond to a report of dating violence, and therefore can be held liable for the consequences of their inaction.
Title IX is a federal statute adopted in 1972 that prohibits sex discrimination in education programs. Under Title IX, schools receiving federal money must respond to sexual harassment and sexual violence.
In this tragic case, a female student was murdered by her abuser after the University failed to take any meaningful steps to protect her, despite having actual knowledge that she was a victim of dating violence.
“Title IX is designed to protect students from losing educational opportunity due to sex-based discrimination, which includes dating violence,” says WLP staff attorney Margaret Zhang, lead author of the brief. “In this case, the victim paid the ultimate price of the school’s failure to meet its obligations under Title IX, and she was deprived of not only her education but her life.”
Thirty-one additional public-interest organizations seeking to ensure that educational institutions promptly and effectively respond to sex-based harassment, including dating violence, joined the brief.
Read or download the brief here.
The Case
Karlie Hall was an 18-year-old freshman at Millersville University in Pennsylvania when she was assaulted and murdered in her dorm room on February 8, 2015. Her boyfriend Gregorio Orrostieta was charged with homicide after an investigation confirmed Hall died of strangulation and other traumatic injuries. In 2016, Orrostieta was convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to 20 to 40 years.
In the wake of her murder, Hall’s family filed a lawsuit alleging the school had prior knowledge of Orrostieta’s abuse of Hall and yet failed to respond, in violation of Title IX.
- Four months before she was murdered, Millersville police responded to Hall’s dorm room at the request of Millersville University staff and had to forcibly remove Orrostieta from the room after he assaulted Hall and tried to force himself into her bed. The officer did not create a report of the incident.
- Hall’s resident advisor subsequently sent an incident report to University officials, including the deputy Title IX coordinator. The deputy Title IX coordinator took no action.
- Hall’s roommate’s mother, who heard about Hall’s abuse from her daughter, contacted Millersville police and additional officials to report the abuse. No one took action.
The District Court concluded that a reasonable jury could find deliberate indifference, but ruled that Millersville University was not liable under Title IX because Orrostieta was not enrolled as a student.
That holding is wrong.
Our Brief: Title IX Requires Response to Dating Violence, a Sex-Based form of Discrimination
Millersville University should have taken action to prevent the murder of student Karlie Hall. Given the nature of dating violence, it is clearly unreasonable for a university to fail to provide victim support after a known occurrence of dating violence perpetrated on its campus.
“Dating violence” and “domestic violence” are included in the definition of sex-based harassment that schools must, by law, address. Dating violence is also expressly included in Millersville University’s policies.
In cases brought under Title IX and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, courts look at the totality of the circumstances to determine whether the conduct is sex-based and infer discriminatory motivation.
Sex-based violence perpetrated by an intimate partner does not make the conduct any less sex-based. Even when personal animosity or jealousy is a motivating factor in the harasser’s conduct—as was the case in Orrostieta’s documented abuse of Hall—the harassment can also be motivated by the victim’s sex, insofar as the abuser is responding to what he perceives as a deviation from sex-based, misogynist stereotypes, such as the expectation a woman submit to a male partner’s orders or demonstrate deference.
In fact, dating violence is an expression of an attempt to control a partner that often arises from sex-based assumptions about how the victim should act in a relationship.
Millersville University knew about and could control the context and perpetrator of the dating violence in Hall’s case, but failed to act. Because that dating violence was sex-based misconduct under Title IX, the law requires that they be held responsible for their inaction.
The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond.
March 2021: Our physical offices are still closed due to the pandemic but we are OPEN and working to serve your needs. Contact us here.
Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts. Stay up to date by following us on twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. As a non-profit organization, we can not do this work without you. Please consider supporting our work.
