Litman v. George Mason University

• Decision Date: 05 May 1999
• Docket Number: CA-97-1755-A,No. 98-1742,98-1742
• Citation: 186 F.3d 544
• Parties: (4th Cir. 1999) ANNETTE GRECO LITMAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Intervenor-Appellee, v. GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, Defendant-Appellant, and EUGENE M. NORRIS; GEOFFREY ORSAK; GIRARD MULHERIN, Defendants. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF VIRGINIA; TRIAL LAWYERS FOR PUBLIC JUSTICE; AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN; AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN LEGAL ADVOCACY FUND; AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION WOMEN'S RIGHTS PROJECT; NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER, Amici Curiae. () Argued:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 544

186 F.3d 544 (4th Cir. 1999)

ANNETTE GRECO LITMAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Intervenor-Appellee, v. GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, Defendant-Appellant, and EUGENE M. NORRIS; GEOFFREY ORSAK; GIRARD MULHERIN, Defendants. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF VIRGINIA; TRIAL LAWYERS FOR PUBLIC JUSTICE; AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN; AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN LEGAL ADVOCACY FUND; AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION WOMEN'S RIGHTS PROJECT; NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER, Amici Curiae.

No. 98-1742 (CA-97-1755-A)

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

Argued: May 5, 1999

Decided: July 28, 1999

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Alexandria. James C. Cacheris, Senior District Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted] COUNSEL ARGUED: William Eugene Thro, Assistant Attorney General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellant. Alan Banov, Washington, D.C.; Seth Michael Galanter, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Mark L. Earley, Attorney General of Virginia, Ronald C. Forehand, Senior Assistant Attorney General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellant. Bill Lann Lee, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Jessica Dunsay Silver, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellee United States. Mary Bauer AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF VIRGINIA FOUNDATION, Richmond, Virginia; Sarah Posner, TRIAL LAWYERS FOR PUBLIC JUSTICE, P.C., Washington, D.C., for Amici Curiae.

Before NIEMEYER, MICHAEL, and TRAXLER, Circuit Judges. Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Niemeyer wrote the opinion, in which Judge Michael and Judge Traxler joined.

OPINION

NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge:

Annette Litman, a student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, filed this action against the University and some of its employees, alleging sex discrimination in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. To justify her suit against a state instrumentality in federal court, Litman relied on 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-7(a)(1), which provides that "[a] State shall not be immune under the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States from suit in Federal court for a violation of . . . title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972."

George Mason University claims with respect to § 2000d-7(a)(1) that (1) Congress lacked the requisite constitutional authority to abrogate its Eleventh Amendment immunity and (2) the provision does not unequivocally effect a voluntary waiver of its Eleventh Amendment immunity. While the district court agreed with the University that Title IX exceeded Congress' remedial authority under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to abrogate its Eleventh Amendment immunity, the district court upheld 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-7(a)(1) under the Spending Clause of Article I of the Constitution as a lawful condition of the University's voluntary acceptance of federal education funding under Title IX. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I

George Mason University ("GMU") is a state-created university "subject at all times to the control of the [Virginia] General Assembly." Va. Code Ann. § 23-91.24. Moreover, the parties agree that GMU is a recipient of federal education funding within the meaning of Title IX, 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a). See 20 U.S.C. § 1687.

In her complaint, which supplies us with the facts in this case at the motion to dismiss stage, Annette Litman alleges that in 1995, as a student in GMU's "extended studies" program, she enrolled in a computer science course with Professor Eugene Norris, for whom she also worked as a research assistant. Over the course of the fall semester, Norris became infatuated with Litman, telling her routinely that he loved her and asking questions about her marriage and specifically about her sex life. Norris also stalked Litman, waiting for her after her speech class, on one occasion, to tell her that he"missed her" and that, despite her efforts to avoid him, he "had his ways" of locating her. After Litman terminated her research position with Norris, she received an e-mail from him stating, "Don't marry someone you can live with, Marry someone you can't live without."

In February 1996, Litman filed a sexual harassment complaint against Norris with GMU's Equity Office, requesting that Norris be reprimanded for his conduct and ordered to stay away from her. The Equity Office ordered Norris to avoid contact with Litman, but it refused to investigate the complaint further, characterizing Litman's allegations of sexual harassment as a "fishing expedition" grounded in conjecture. Finding this response inadequate, Litman sought the intervention of GMU's president. She also circulated a petition urging GMU to investigate Norris' alleged wrongdoings, but GMU failed to undertake the requested investigation.

Unable to locate a professor to supervise her senior research project, Litman maintained that GMU's faculty refused to interact with her once it became known that she had filed a sexual harassment complaint against one of its members. She thereafter sent suggestive and hostile e-mail messages to certain faculty members, resulting in two professors instituting sexual harassment charges of their own against her pursuant to GMU's Student Judicial Code. Following a trial before GMU's University Judicial Board in May 1996, the Board found Litman guilty of these charges and both imposed academic sanctions against her and expelled her from GMU. Litman asserts that the Board's process was so irregular that GMU effectively precluded her from preparing an adequate defense. Litman's complaint against Norris was tried in October 1996 and resulted in a finding that Norris had not violated GMU's sexual harassment policy.

In October 1997, Litman filed this action alleging that GMU and some of its employees discriminated and retaliated against her on the basis of her sex in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. Invoking Eleventh Amendment immunity, GMU moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. Litman responded, maintaining that Congress, through its enactment of the Civil Rights Remedies Equalization Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-7(a)(1), abrogated GMU's Eleventh Amendment immunity, or, alternatively, that GMU waived its immunity as a condition to receiving federal funding under Title IX. When GMU contended that Congress' effort to abrogate GMU's Eleventh Amendment immunity was unconstitutional, the United States intervened, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2403(a), to defend the constitutionality of 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-7(a)(1).

The district court denied GMU's motion to dismiss. Relying on City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997), the court determined that the protections afforded by Title IX differed from those afforded by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in important ways. It concluded first that Title IX regulated both private and state-sponsored conduct, whereas the Equal Protection Clause, by its terms, regulated only state action. Second, it concluded that Title IX reached beyond the Fourteenth Amendment's prohibitions against gender discrimination by imposing liability on funding recipients for "non-intentional (i.e. disparate impact) discrimination." Litman v. George Mason Univ., 5 F. Supp.2d 366, 374 (E.D. Va. 1998). The district court accordingly concluded that § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment did not provide Congress with the authority to abrogate GMU's Eleventh Amendment immunity. The court went on to hold, however, that GMU waived its Eleventh Amendment immunity by accepting Title IX funding, which was conditioned on the unambiguous waiver of immunity codified in 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-7(a)(1). The court reasoned that while Congress does not have"the authority pursuant to its Article I powers to simply abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity, Congress does have the power to require the States to waive their immunity pursuant to a valid exercise of its spending power." Id. at 375. Relying on language in South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987), and New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992), the district court also emphasized that the Eleventh Amendment presented no "independent constitutional bar" to Congress' employing its spending power in this manner. Id. at 376 (internal quotation marks omitted).

From the district court's denial of GMU's motion asserting Eleventh Amendment immunity, GMU noticed this interlocutory appeal. See Puerto Rico Aqueduct & Sewer Auth. v. Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 506 U.S. 139, 147 (1993) (holding that "States and state entities that claim to be `arms of the State' may take advantage of the collateral order doctrine to appeal a district court order denying a claim of Eleventh Amendment immunity").

II

On appeal, GMU contends that notwithstanding the provisions of the Civil Rights Remedies Equalization Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d7(a)(1), which amended Title IX to make explicit that "[a] State shall not be immune under the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States from suit in Federal court for a violation of . . . title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972," it may not be sued in federal court. It argues that in enacting § 2000d-7(a)(1), Congress lacked the power to abrogate Eleventh Amendment immunity through § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment and also that GMU did not consent to a waiver because "there is nothing in Title IX or in Congress' attempt to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment which states that waiver of the Eleventh Amendment is a condition of receiving federal funds."

Before determining whether Congress' effort to abrogate GMU's Eleventh Amendment immunity is justified by § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, we first consider whether GMU consented to waive its Eleventh Amendment immunity as a condition of receiving federal...