This Should Seem a Clear-Cut Decision, But I Am Sure Progressives Will Be Calling This a Rape Promoting Decision in 3...2...1

9/29/25 Volokh Conspiracy cites a recent decision that:

In October 2020, University of Maryland student Jane Roe … alleged that John Doe …, the plaintiff here, and another student had sexually assaulted her in separate incidents on the same morning. Following an investigation, the University concluded that Doe was not responsible for any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Roe and others embarked on a months-long public campaign to brand Doe a rapist and to exclude him from campus activities. Doe now asserts that the University's failure to address this hostile, sex-based campaign violated Title IX….

[T]he persistent pattern of publicly identifying [Doe] as Roe's "rapist" which led to his removal from Club Lacrosse, constitutes harassment directed at his sex. "Sexual harassment" includes "sex-specific language that is aimed to humiliate, ridicule, or intimidate." Plainly, a reasonable juror could conclude that persistent public pronouncements that Doe is a "rapist," a "sexual predator" and "dangerous to girls on campus," is language aimed at his sex and his sexual conduct.

This will doubtless be a surprise to feminists but falsely accusing someone of being a rapist is a serious attack.

1. There are very serious Christian college men who would find this offensive because it accuses them of not remaining clean of improper premarital sexual behavior.

2.  Even those not so constrained would regard this as an accusation that they lack adequate salesmanship/begging skills.

I have posted in the past about false rape accusations destroying the career possibilities of young men, usually black young men, who seem to lack sufficient points in the current hierarchy of victimhood.  

If the university had no basis for holding an opinion about whether the accusation had merit, this would be a simple question of slander by other students.  But the University had investigated and found the accusation meritless.  Its failure (does the University have preferred pronouns?) to deal with what it knew to be false accusations seems to be part of the continuing war on men.  This doubtless plays a role in the increasingly absurd sex imbalance on college campuses.