A federal court in Manhattan has dismissed a Title IX hostile environment claim brought by a medical student who argued that the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai responded inadequately when it suspended, rather than expelled, a male student found responsible for sexually assaulting her.
Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York signed the order granting the school’s motion to dismiss on 9 September 2026, according to the Justia docket entry. The case, Roe v. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, was filed on 2 October 2025 under docket number 1:25-cv-08157, classified as a civil rights education matter under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
The plaintiff, identified as Jane Roe, was in her final semester at the medical school when she reported that a fellow student, John Doe, had sexually assaulted her in a campus residence hall. The school investigated, found Doe responsible, and imposed a 20-month suspension. Its written determination noted that the assault ‘did not involve forcible rape or penetration,’ that Doe was under the influence of alcohol at the time, and that no evidence of similar prior conduct had been presented. The school concluded that suspension would afford Doe ‘the opportunity to complete his medical training.’
Roe appealed the sanction. The school affirmed its decision. She then brought suit, advancing four separate theories under Title IX.
Why the Suspension Did Not Constitute an Inadequate Response
Roe’s hostile environment claim required her to show both that she subjectively perceived her environment to be hostile or abusive and that it was objectively so, meaning it was ‘permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of her educational environment.’ She also had to show that a school official with authority to act had actual knowledge of the discrimination and failed to respond adequately.
Judge Carter accepted, for purposes of the motion, that Roe may have satisfied the subjective and objective elements. Her claim nonetheless failed on the adequacy of the school’s response. Under settled Second Circuit authority, an educational institution need only ‘take timely and reasonable measures to end the harassment’; those measures need not be effective, only taken in good faith. The court found that the school’s written reasoning referenced the relevant policies, explained that the panel had ‘weighed many factors,’ named six of them, and drew a clear logical connection between the circumstances and the chosen sanction. On those facts, the remedy was not ‘clearly unreasonable.’
The hostile environment claim also failed for a second, independent reason: Roe did not plead the existence of a hostile environment after the remedy was issued. A ‘foreseeable risk of ongoing proximity’ to Doe was not enough. Roe was not automatically rendered ‘vulnerable to’ harassment simply by being on the same campus, particularly given that Doe remained subject to a no-contact order.
Title IX Hostile Environment Claim: The Adequacy Test and the Other Theories
Roe’s erroneous outcome theory fell away quickly. She agreed with the finding that Doe was responsible; her complaint was with the severity of the sanction, not the outcome itself. An erroneous outcome claim requires a plaintiff to allege that the result of the proceeding was wrong, which Roe plainly did not.
Her selective enforcement claim required a comparator: evidence that a similarly situated student of a different sex or gender had been treated more favourably. Roe provided none. Without a comparator, the claim could not survive a motion to dismiss.
The broader discrimination claim demanded circumstances giving rise to an inference of sex or gender bias. Roe argued that the school had favoured the male perpetrator, but the court found no nexus between either party’s gender and the alleged bias. Institutional preference for a particular outcome in a disciplinary proceeding does not, without more, establish sex discrimination under Title IX.
Judge Carter reaffirmed the principle that courts should ‘refrain from second-guessing the disciplinary decisions made by school administrators.’ Administrators are not required to impose any particular sanction, including expulsion or no-proximity orders. The school’s latitude in fashioning a remedy, provided its reasoning is transparent and grounded in policy, is wide.
The school was represented by Jeffrey P. Metzler and Max A. Winograd of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. Winograd and Metzler have previously co-authored Pillsbury’s commentary on Title IX liability for institutions, including analysis of the Supreme Court ruling that emotional distress damages are not recoverable under Title IX and related antidiscrimination statutes.
Subject to any onward appeal, the decision reinforces that a complainant’s Title IX hostile environment claim against a school turns not on whether the chosen sanction was optimal, but on whether the institution’s response was clearly unreasonable, and whether a hostile environment in fact persisted after that response was given.
