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Boston University has garnered attention for its recent removal of pride flags from professors’ and department’s office windows. Attorney Naomi Shatz spoke to Boston.com about the legal implications of this action, noting that even private universities like BU can be sued under the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act if they violate constitutional rights, like the right to free expression, in ways that are threatening or coercive. Naomi also noted that the policy BU claims to be enforcing does not appear to apply outside of the context of on-campus events or demonstrations, and if the university is not applying their policies uniformly, “you’re going to have discrimination concerns and issues that they are censoring people based on the content.”

Read the full story here.

Last month in Alan L. v. Lexington Public Schools, a federal district court in Massachusetts granted a preliminary injunction requiring a Massachusetts elementary school to provide notice and an opportunity for a parent to opt his child out of lessons that touch on sexual orientation and gender identity. The decision implemented last year’s Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which held that parents have a constitutional right to opt their children out of exposure to certain materials in the classroom that conflict with the parents’ religious beliefs.

Shatz told Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly that cases like Alan L. and Mahmoud are likely to have a chilling effect in schools: “It seems unlikely that schools will have the resources, both administrative and financial, to deal with individualized opt-out requests from numerous parents on different materials or to litigate legal challenges around those opt-out requests, and instead may preemptively remove any materials that could be subject to challenges or opt-outs from the curriculum entirely,” Shatz said.

Read the full article here.

Last month, the Massachusetts Appeals Court made clear in Doe 99 v. Cheffi, which we wrote about here, that most students who experience sexual harassment in school are not required to file their claims with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination before proceeding to court. Zalkind Law’s Naomi Shatz spoke to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly about the decision, noting that “it’s very clear from the statute under what circumstances you can go to the MCAD and therefore have to go to the MCAD,” but that in most cases students who experience sexual harassment at school can file their claims directly in court. Attorney Shatz noted that the case highlights the poor draftsmanship of Chapter 151C, which only provides protection against discrimination to students in vocational schools or students during the school application process. As Attorney Shatz told Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, “It’s particularly important that this get fixed on the legislative front now that the protection students used to have from federal laws [like Title IX] is evaporating.”

Read the full article here.

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Maine Department of Education, alleging that the state violates Title IX by allowing transgender students to participate on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Attorney Naomi Shatz spoke with the Bangor Daily News about the lawsuit, noting that the administration’s interpretation of Title IX is contrary to how federal courts have interpreted the law.

Read the story here:

The national stakes of Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Maine

Last month, the First Circuit decided Wadsworth v. Nguyen et. al., a case alleging Title IX and Equal Protection claims against a school district and some of its administrators for sexual harassment by a school principal against a high school student. The First Circuit reversed in part the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to the district and its employees, allowing the plaintiff’s equal protection claim against the principal and Title IX claim against the school could proceed. Attorney Naomi Shatz spoke to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly about the First Circuit’s holding that the principal, who had repeatedly made sexual comments to a vulnerable sixteen year old student, threatened her with assault if she didn’t respond to his texts quickly enough, bought her gifts, and pulled her out of class every day to make her spend time with him, was not entitled to qualified immunity. “The defendant’s argument that a right is not clearly established unless there is an in-circuit appellate case that has already addressed the exact same factual scenario is nonsensical, contrary to 1st Circuit precedent, and I’m surprised the District Court adopted that artificially narrow reading of what ‘clearly established law’ means,” Shatz told the publication. 

Read the full story here.

Attorney Naomi Shatz spoke to the Bangor Daily News about President Trump’s executive order prohibiting transgender women from playing sports in schools and athletic organizations that receive federal funding. Maine’s governor and attorney general have stated they will follow state and federal law – including a Maine law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity – rather than the executive order. Attorney Shatz said she expected courts to have to decide the question of whether an executive order purporting to interpret federal law overrides state laws. “I think the answer has to be no, the president cannot dictate that states violate their laws,” Shatz said.

Read the full article here: https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/02/28/politics/washington/untested-legal-theory-donald-trump-title-ix-fight-maine-joam40zk0w/

Attorney Naomi R. Shatz spoke to Commonwealth Magazine about the Department of Higher Education’s first report to the legislature on campus sexual assault statistics. In January 2021, Governor Baker signed into law “An Act relative to sexual violence on higher education campuses,” which we have previously discussed here. The law requires higher education institutions in Massachusetts to report annual sexual misconduct statistics to the Department of Higher Education, which in turn reports those aggregated statistics to the legislature. For the first reporting year, covering data for 2020, campuses reported a total of 901 sexual misconduct complaints. The data indicates that fewer than one third of these reported cases proceeded through adjudication to a determination of whether the school’s sexual misconduct policy was violated. The article is available here.