Expelled USC football player asks Ninth Circuit to revive gender bias suit

Matthew Boermeester says the university persisted with its Title IX investigation even after his onetime girlfriend said he hadn't harmed her.PASADENA, Calif. (CN) — A former University of Southern California football player urged the Ninth Circuit on Thursday to reinstate his lawsuit accusing the university of gender bias for expelling him over domestic violence claims.Matthew Boermeester argues that USC’s investigation into a January 2017 interaction he had in an alley with another student he had been dating was informed by archaic stereotypes and innate biases that male athletes such as him are predisposed to be aggressive, violent and hypermasculine.Last year, a federal judge in Los Angeles dismissed Boermeester’s complaint with prejudice because he already litigated the underlying issues in an unsuccessful writ proceeding in state court.Boermeester’s state court case made it all the way up to the California Supreme Court, which found courts shouldn’t dictate how universities conduct their Title IX investigations and rejected his argument that he hadn’t gotten a fair hearing before he was expelled two classes shy of graduation.The hearing before the Ninth Circuit panel in Pasadena, California, focused on whether Boermeester could or should have brought a Title IX gender discrimination claim as part of his state court petition and whether his state court challenge to USC’s administrative procedures precluded him from bringing this claim in federal court.Boermeester’s attorney, Mark Hathaway, argued that the state court proceeding turned on whether USC had met what he said was the low bar of notifying a student accused of violating its policies of the charges and giving them an opportunity to be heard.“Schools can meet the requirements under 1094.5 and still discriminate,” Hathaway said, referring to the California writ of administrative mandate procedure for challenging quasi-judicial decisions. “That’s what happened here.”The attorney also reiterated that the purported victim, a senior student at the time of the incident, had come forward publicly to say that she hadn’t been harmed by Boermeester and that USC had made her into victim against her will.The incident in question occurred late at night in the alley behind her off-campus apartment and witnesses testified that Boermeester had grabbed the woman by the throat and repeatedly pushed her against a concrete wall, causing her head to hit the wall. A nearby video camera recorded the interaction, though the picture quality was poor.The incident was reported to USC’s Title IX office by the father of one of the witnesses. The woman initially told a university investigator that Boermeester had been violent with her on previous occasions and asked for an emergency order.She later told the investigator that she was “freaked out” and scared of getting into trouble with the football team if they found that she been talking with the Title IX office.Boermeester was the kicker on the USC Trojans football team for which he booted the game-winning field goal in their Jan. 2, 2017, Rose Bowl win. The investigation was leaked to the media, and the woman identified herself on social media as the purported victim and said nothing untoward had happened between her and Boermeester.The university nevertheless found that Boermeester had violated its policy against intimate partner violence and expelled him.While his state court case was on appeal, Boermeester filed his civil rights lawsuit in federal court in 2019. It was put on hold until the California Supreme Court issued its decision in 2023.The Ninth Circuit panel included U.S. Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson, a Donald Trump appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Holly Thomas, a Joe Biden appointee, and U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts, a Biden appointee on the federal court in San Jose, California, who sat on the panel by designation.They took the appeal under submission without indicating how they might rule.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads