Cases & Developments

Granting in part and denying in part Defendant Yale’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a male former doctor for Yale University School of Medicine, brought claims of gender discrimination and retaliation under Title VII, as well as a Title IX due process violation against the University, alleging it discriminated against him on the basis of sex. Plaintiff also initially asserted but later abandoned claims for breach of contract and intentional infliction of emotional distress. While jointly employed by the University and working at the Connecticut Mental Health Center (the Center), plaintiff sent multiple private messages to a colleague via Instagram, which she did not respond to. When the colleague complained and requested that plaintiff be advised not to contact her again, Yale initiated a Title IX investigation into the communications but found no violation, and plaintiff ceased communicating with her directly. Subsequently, the female coworker filed a second Title IX complaint, which Yale also investigated, and again, found no violation. Later, the female colleague saw plaintiff – whose job duties included taking blood and urine samples from patients – waiting outside a patient room on the same floor of the Center where she worked, which prompted her to file a third complaint. While Yale investigated the third complaint, the Center banned plaintiff from entering its facilities despite confirmation from plaintiff’s supervisor that he had been present on the second floor of the Center pursuant to his job duties. Eventually, the Center lifted its ban, and plaintiff returned to work. The female colleague was notified of plaintiff’s return to the Center and expressed concern about potential future interactions with plaintiff. Yale took no immediate action in response to this new expression of concern from the colleague. Two months later, and allegedly one day after Yale was notified that plaintiff had filed a charge of discrimination with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO), Yale initiated a fourth Title IX investigation. Plaintiff claims he sought to file a cross complaint against the female coworker, but Yale declined to permit him to do so since she was neither a University employee nor student. Plaintiff claims that the fourth investigation exceeded the scope of the female colleague’s most recent articulation of concern, disregarded the conclusions of the trio of prior of Title IX investigations, and improperly considered his initial direct messages to the coworker. Since the fourth investigation found he engaged in sexually harassing conduct, plaintiff was “suspended, banned from his work location and forced out of his employment with Yale.” The court allowed his discrimination claims to proceed, reasoning that “[a] Title IX proceeding could not have been properly brought against [p]laintiff because all prior complaints against him had been found either to be unsubstantiated or not rising to the level of sexual harassment or stalking.” It also permitted the retaliation claims to move forward based upon the alleged procedural irregularity of Yale’s disallowance of a crossclaim by plaintiff, and the temporal proximity between plaintiff’s filing of a CHRO complaint and initiation of Yale’s fourth Title IX investigation into plaintiff. Plaintiff’s due process claims were dismissed as duplicative of his claims of discrimination.