Title IX sexual harassment case is dismissed against SUNY

This Title IX and First Amendment case was filed against SUNY Stony Brook after a female graduate student was removed from the student teaching program once she complained about a male supervisor whom, plaintiff asserts, had a sexual interest in her. The case is dismissed. 

The case is Sutton v. SUNY Stony Brook, a summary order issued on September 27. I argued the appeal on Sutton's behalf and will try to be unbiased. Plaintiff says that her supervisor, Mangano, frequently texted and called her on her cell phone, met with her in poorly-lit rooms, said he'd like to see her "in action" off campus, commented on her feminine "gait," complained she was brushing him off, entered her physical space, said she should make herself "available" to him, and and did a sexual gesture with a pen in her presence. She asserts that Mangano said that while she was poised to pass her licensing exam, he had control over her future in the program and "threatened [her] with a contract to force her to communicate with him outside of class." Plaintiff complained about Mangano in writing to another supervisor without providing all of these details, but noted that Mangano was supervising her improperly. Shortly afterward, plaintiff was kicked out of the program after she lodged her complaint and declined to sign a performance contract that she claims had no basis in SUNY procedure. She had been student teaching only about a month.

The Title IX claim fails, the Court of Appeals (Parker, Livingston and Lee) holds, in part because plaintiff's written complaints against Mangano did not sufficiently detail the nature of the sexual harassment and only objected to his overbearing management style. That means the retaliation that followed cannot be Title IX retaliation. As for the Title IX quid pro quo claim (which I thought was the strongest argument), the Court summarizes the allegations in the complaint, but not all of them, stating that her "allegations related to Mangano's alleged sexual advances were only conclusory allegations of implied sexual advances." That's not the way I argued it, but that's how the Court sees it. 

What about the First Amendment claim? That's gone also. The state did not dispute that plaintiff engaged in protected speech in complaining about Mangano, but the Court says we have a causation problem because she admits she did not comply with SUNY's measures to improve her performance in refusing to sign the teaching contract and a disinterested internal appeals committee ratified her expulsion. Plaintiff argued that the contract was an unauthorized remedial measure and the committee was not neutral as she was denied due process and never had a chance to really defend herself from the allegation that she was not a good student teacher.