Attorneys general from Arkansas and six other states are supporting the University of Arkansas' request to dismiss a former student's lawsuit against the school that alleges university officials mishandled her rape allegations.
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge filed a legal brief Monday in support of dismissing the lawsuit, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. Attorneys general from Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas also joined in the filing.
The lawsuit was filed by a former student athlete who alleged the school acted with "deliberate indifference" when she told police and school officials that she'd been raped in her dorm room by a 23-year-old student in 2014. The 23-year-old, a former university athlete, told authorities the encounter with the woman was consensual, and criminal charges were never filed.
The lawsuit argues that the university improperly handled a campus disciplinary process and didn't adequately train people on the disciplinary panel who heard the woman's case. The suit said those missteps violated Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.
Rutledge's office argues that the state's sovereign immunity shields the school from lawsuits or criminal prosecution, and that should force a federal appellate court to dismiss the lawsuit. The case against the university "presents an important legal issue about states' sovereign immunity from monetary damages," Rutledge's spokesman, Judd Deere, said in an email.
The involvement of six other attorneys general, all Republicans like Rutledge, "signals that states are using the case as the context for a coordinated effort to push back on the federalization of civil rights," Erin Buzuvis, a law professor at Western New England University School of Law and co-founder of Title IX Blog, told the newspaper.
Buzuvis described the other states' involvement as pushing for a "`states' rights' approach to government that would prefer less federal power over the states."
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
Attorneys for the university sought to have the case dismissed in November, but U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III ruled that the case would continue to move forward.
