By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Ohio State University’s bid to dismiss lawsuits brought by alleged sexual abuse victims of a now-deceased doctor who was employed by the school’s athletic department and medical staff for nearly two decades.
The justices turned away Ohio State’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that allowed litigation to proceed despite having been brought decades after the abuse by Richard Strauss, which occurred from 1978 to 1998.
Ohio State has reached settlement agreements with 296 survivors of Strauss’s abuse, totaling more than $60 million, while others have continued to pursue their claims in court. Several other major U.S. universities have agreed to multimillion-dollar settlements in recent years to resolve claims made in episodes similar to the one at Ohio State.
At issue in the current litigation was whether the state of Ohio’s two-year statute of limitations for such misconduct began to run at the time of the abuse or decades later when the alleged victims learned that Ohio State was investigating Strauss’s misconduct.
Ohio State in 2018 launched an independent investigation led by the law firm Perkins Coie after a former member of the university’s men’s wrestling team reported to the school that Strauss had abused him decades earlier.
A 2019 report detailing the investigative findings said that Strauss had sexually abused at least 177 men, nearly all of whom were students, and that university staff who knew of the abuse failed to act. The abuse included groping and fondling of the students’ genitals and other acts under the guise of a medical examination.
Strauss retired from the faculty in 1998 and committed suicide in 2005.
News of the investigation and its findings prompted more than 500 plaintiffs to sue Ohio State, alleging they had been sexually abused by Strauss and that the school had shown “deliberately indifference.”
A group of 100 plaintiffs, led by former Ohio State student Steve Snyder-Hill, were among those who brought a lawsuit under a 1972 federal law called Title IX of the Education Amendments, which prohibits sex-based discrimination by schools that receive federal funding. Title IX lawsuits look to state law statutes of limitations but federal courts determine when the clock begins, a question that has divided courts.
A federal judge initially dismissed the Title IX claims as untimely under Ohio’s two-year statute of limitations.
But the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Court of Appeals last September revived the lawsuits, saying that the alleged victims’ claims became legally enforceable only “when they knew or had reason to know that Ohio State” had treated their alleged abuse with deliberate indifference.
“The plaintiffs’ allegations that they lacked reason to know that Ohio State injured them are plausible,” the 6th Circuit wrote.
The ruling also opened the door for certain alleged victims who were not former Ohio State students or employees to sue the school under Title IX.
Ohio State told the Supreme Court in its appeal that allowing the lawsuits to proceed based on the 6th Circuit’s ruling would mean “there is essentially no limit on the stale claims that could be brought.”
Similar scandals have roiled other major state universities.
The University of Michigan in 2022 finalized a $490 million settlement with more than 1,000 people who alleged sexual assault by a former sports doctor. The University of California system in 2022 agreed to pay $243 million to settle legal claims by about 200 women who accused a former UCLA gynecologist of sexual abuse.
The University of Southern California in 2021 reached a $852 million settlement with more than 700 women who accused a former campus gynecologist of sexually abusing them. Michigan State University in 2018 reached a $500 million settlement with more than 300 women who said they were sexually abused by a gymnastics doctor.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
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