Owens v. La. State Univ.
| Decision Date | 17 February 2023 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action 21-242-WBV-SDJ |
| Parties | ABBY OWENS, ET AL. v. LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY, ET AL. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Louisiana |
ORDER AND REASONS
Before the Court is Verge Ausberry's Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs' Second Amended Complaint and Jury Demand.[1] Plaintiffs oppose the Motion,[2] and Ausberry has filed a Reply.[3] After careful consideration of the parties' memoranda and the applicable law, the Motion is GRANTED.
This case involves allegations by ten former students of Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College (“LSU”) that LSU and its Athletic Department funded and implemented a purposefully deficient sexual misconduct and Title IX reporting scheme separate from LSU's official Title IX office to keep sexual assault claims within the Athletic Department.[5] In their Second Amended Complaint and Jury Demand (“Second Amended Complaint”), Abby Owens, Samantha Brennan, Calise Richardson, Jade Lewis, Kennan Johnson, Elisabeth Andries, Jane Doe, Ashlyn Robertson, Corinn Hovis, and Sarah Beth Kitch (collectively, “Plaintiffs”), allege that while attending school at LSU's Baton Rouge campus between 2009 and 2021, the defendants, LSU's Board of Supervisors, Jennie Stewart, Verge Ausberry, Miriam Segar and Johnathan Sanders (collectively, “Defendants”) repeatedly engaged in discriminatory, retaliatory, and other unlawful actions in their interactions with Plaintiffs and in response to Plaintiffs' reports of Title IX violations and violations of LSU's Code of Student Conduct, thereby violating their own policies.[6] Plaintiffs allege that LSU handled Title IX complaints made against student-athletes differently than complaints made against non-athletes.[7]Plaintiffs further allege that, “Title IX complaints against student-athletes are purposefully buried or diverted so as to ensure that those complaints were never properly investigated or addressed and the student-athletes are not negatively impacted or prevented from concentrating on their athletics, all of which benefits LSU financially and causes further harm to Plaintiffs.”[8] Plaintiffs assert that Defendants' actions and inactions in response to their reports of Title IX violations subjected them to additional harassment and created a sexually hostile environment on campus.[9]
Plaintiffs allege that they were victims of sex-based discrimination, including rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and/or stalking, that was perpetrated by male LSU students and a male professor between 2009 and 2020, and that one plaintiff was the victim of verbal and emotional abuse by an LSU tennis coach.[10]Although the alleged sexual misconduct occurred more than a year before Plaintiffs filed this lawsuit, Plaintiffs allege that they were unaware of LSU's inadequate Title IX reporting policies until the March 2021 publication of the Husch Blackwell report. According to Plaintiffs, LSU retained the Husch Blackwell law firm in November 2020 to investigate the school's handling of several Title IX-related incidents, as well as LSU's Title IX policies and procedures.[11] Plaintiffs allege that Husch Blackwell publicly released its investigative report and findings on March 5, 2021, concluding that various incidents of athletics-related misconduct had not been appropriately reported to LSU's Title IX Coordinator and voiced concern about a lack of reporting prior to November 2016.[12] Husch Blackwell also found that LSU's Title IX Office had never been appropriately staffed or provided with the independence and resources to carry out Title IX's mandates, noting that the Title IX Office “has at time not handled those matters reported to it appropriately.”[13] Husch Blackwell noted that its concerns about reporting were not limited to athletics, and that it found deficiencies in a variety of different matters.[14]
In the Second Amended Complaint, Plaintiffs allege that they could not have known that LSU and its employees, including the individual defendants, had concealed disclosures of sexual misconduct that should have been reported to LSU's Title IX Office, that LSU purposely handled complaints of sexual misconduct perpetrated by student athletes or others affiliated with the LSU Athletics Department in a different manner than complaints of sexual misconduct perpetrated by other individuals, and the defendants intentionally instituted a process of responding to disclosures of Title IX violations in a manner designed to deter any future disclosures.[15]
Pertinent to the instant Motion, Plaintiffs assert the following three claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Verge Ausberry, the current Executive Deputy Athletic Director and Executive Director of External Relations for LSU,[16] in his individual capacity:[17] (1) First Amendment Retaliation; (2) Denial of Equal Protection under the Fourteenth Amendment; and (3) Denial of Substantive and Procedural Due Process under the Fourteenth Amendment.[18] In his Motion to Dismiss, Ausberry asserts that Plaintiffs have failed to state a cause of action under § 1983.[19] Ausberry then raises the defense of qualified immunity, asserting that Plaintiffs have failed to show that any clearly established case law would have put a reasonable state official on notice that failing to report a Title IX complaint of misconduct would be a violation of Plaintiffs' rights under the First or Fourth Amendment.[20] Ausberry further asserts that Plaintiffs' § 1983 claims are time-barred because all of the alleged actions occurred on or before February 2020, more than a year before this suit was filed in April 2021.[21] Plaintiffs oppose the Motion, asserting that Ausberry is not entitled to qualified immunity and that their claims are not time-barred because they did not accrue until the release of the Husch Blackwell report in March 2021.[22] In response, Ausberry maintains that Plaintiffs' claims are time-barred and that he is entitled to qualified immunity and the dismissal of Plaintiffs' § 1983 claims.[23]
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a defendant can seek dismissal of a complaint, or any part of it, for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.[24] To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, “a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'”[25] “A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.”[26] “The plausibility standard is not akin to a probability requirement, but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.”[27]
A court must accept all well-pleaded facts as true, viewing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.[28] The Court, however, is not bound to accept as true conclusory allegations, unwarranted factual inferences, or legal conclusions.[29]“Dismissal is appropriate when the complaint on its face shows a bar to relief.”[30] In deciding a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, a court is generally prohibited from considering information outside the pleadings, but may consider documents outside of the complaint when they are: (1) attached to the motion; (2) referenced in the complaint; and (3) central to the plaintiff's claims.[31] The Court can also take judicial notice of matters that are of public record, including pleadings that have been filed in a federal or state court.[32]
Title 42 U.S.C. § 1983 creates a damages remedy for the violation of federal constitutional or statutory rights under color of state law. Specifically, § 1983 provides that:
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State . . . subjects, or causes to be subjected, any . . . person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured.[33]
Because § 1983 merely provides a remedy for designated rights, rather than creating any substantive rights, “an underlying constitutional or statutory violation is a predicate to liability.”[34] To establish § 1983 liability, the plaintiff must establish the following three elements: (1) deprivation of a right secured by the United States Constitution or federal law; (2) that occurred under color of state law; and (3) was caused by a state actor.[35]
Qualified immunity is a defense to § 1983 claims that “shields government officials from civil damages liability unless the official violated a statutory or constitutional right that was clearly established at the time of the challenged conduct.”[36] The Supreme Court has held that courts may grant qualified immunity on the ground that a purported right was not “clearly established” by prior case law, without resolving the often more difficult question of whether the purported right exists at all.[37] According to the Supreme Court, “This approach comports with our usual reluctance to decide constitutional questions unnecessarily.”[38] The Supreme Court has further held that, “A clearly established right is one that is ‘sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing violates that right.'”[39] ...
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