We can now confirm that over six hundred lawsuits have been filed in behalf of students (and some school personnel) accused of Title IX-related offenses. Our current count of lawsuits in our Title IX Lawsuits Database is 621. This tally is partially the result of our improved methods of tracking state court lawsuits, of which 36 were added in March along with 18 federal court lawsuits. We have leads on more lawsuits and will be adding them soon.

As we make this announcement, we have recently learned that Betsy DeVos’ long-anticipated Title IX regulations have cleared the Office of Management and Budget, meaning virtually nothing is standing in the way of their publication. The DOE could make the announcement at any moment. In the meantime, we’d like to provide more information on these lawsuits.

Nearly half of all the lawsuits in our tally – 47.5% – have been filed in a mere five states: California (18%), New York (12%), Ohio (7.5%), Pennsylvania (5.5%), and Massachusetts (4.5%). The UC and CSU systems in particular have been pummeled by a high amount of litigation via writs of mandate, while in New York the SUNY system, Columbia, and Cornell, among others, have faced a high number of lawsuits.

Two litigation powerhouses – Andrew Miltenberg and his team at Nesenoff & Miltenberg and Mark Hathaway and Jenna Parker of Hathaway Parker – have litigated ~25% of the total number of lawsuits. The rest have been litigated by a spread of 610 attorneys representing plaintiffs and 744 attorneys representing schools and school personnel. Regarding court and judge data, we have seen litigation in 192 courts (86 federal courts and 106 state courts), with 622 judges (429 male and 193 female) presiding over litigation.

On average, 120 lawsuits have been filed each year from 2017-2019. We have seen an anticipated decline in recent filings due to COVID-19. With the imminent publication of DeVos’ Title IX regulations, however, we believe the 2021 spring semester will start a new, steeper ramp upward that will exceed the 2017-2019 yearly averages in terms of lawsuit filings.

To clarify the scope of our data, these lawsuits have been filed in behalf of respondents to Title IX proceedings in higher education. This includes students and school personnel accused of such offenses as sexual misconduct (which includes harassment, assault, and exploitation), dating violence (including threats of violence), and stalking. We are not counting due process lawsuits with no Title IX element to them, such as hazing or academic dishonesty-related lawsuits. We aim to be comprehensive in our database work. We track 75 data points per lawsuit. This includes basic docket data, claims, and legal files, as well as court, judge, attorney, law firm, school, and other data.

We await the imminent release of the new Title IX regulations. If you have not done so, we also invite you to view our database work in greater detail.

Thank you!