Student Rights & Title IX

Back to School Basics: What You Need to Know About Academic Misconduct

Published on: August 7, 2025 | by Naomi Shatz

If you or your child is accused of engaging in academic misconduct, you’ll get a crash course in how the college or university bureaucracy works to process these cases and sanction students. Before that happens–and to prevent that from happening–it is important to understand a few key points about academic misconduct in higher education.

Lesson #1: Read the handbook and syllabi

Students (and schools) are required to follow the handbooks, policies, and syllabi they receive. While sitting down to pore over hundreds of pages of regulations is no one’s idea of a fun way to start the year, students are expected to know what is in these documents, and will be sanctioned if they violate the rules they set out. It is particularly important for students to read their professor’s syllabi carefully, because each professor may have different rules about what kind of work is and is not acceptable in their class. It is the student’s responsibility to know the rules for each class they are in, and to follow those rules.

Lesson #2: Academic misconduct is a broad category

In a previous post I explained how colleges define plagiarism, probably the most common form of academic misconduct. Colleges will sanction students for plagiarism if the student intentionally or accidentally copies, quotes without proper attribution, or incorporates language or ideas from some other person into their work. Colleges also deem it plagiarism if students work together on an assignment but do not list their co-collaborators on the work they turn in.

Unauthorized use of AI is another area where students are increasingly being disciplined for academic misconduct. Each school, and each professor, may have different rules about whether and how students can use AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grammarly, and CoPilot. When students are allowed to use these tools, they may be required to disclose that use. Some professors may prohibit their use altogether. CONTINUE READING ›

Appeals Court Reaffirms Students’ Right to Sue in Court for Sexual Harassment

Published on: July 31, 2025 | by Naomi Shatz

This week, the Appeals Court decided a case examining how students can bring claims under Chapter 151C, the Fair Educational Practices law.

In Doe 99 v. Cheffi et al., a former public high school student who alleged she had been sexually abused by a teacher sued the City of Chelsea and others for negligence and under Chapter 151C, which prohibits educational institutions from harassing students. The City moved to dismiss the Chapter 151C claim, arguing that the plaintiff was required to file her complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) before she could bring her claim in court. CONTINUE READING ›

First Circuit Holds that School Districts, Not Parents, Decide School Policy and Rejects “Parental Rights” Argument to Out Transgender and Non-Binary Students

Published on: February 20, 2025 | by Naomi Shatz

Since 2012, Massachusetts laws have prohibited discrimination based on gender identity, including in education. The Massachusetts Department of Education has had longstanding guidance in place instructing schools to use students’ preferred names and pronouns while at school. This week, in Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, the First Circuit Court of Appeals decided whether a school policy that followed this state law and DOE guidance violates parents’ constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their child. The school won. CONTINUE READING ›

Massachusetts Law Prohibits Schools from Complying with Anti-Trans Athlete Executive Order

Published on: February 8, 2025 | by Naomi Shatz

Youth sports are a huge part of the American education system, something many parents, schools, and communities place a high value on maintaining. Studies demonstrate the many mental, social, emotional, and physical benefits children derive from participating in organized athletics. In fact, during Trump’s previous presidency the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition Science Board published a pamphlet noting that “Research shows that participating in youth sports can lead to immediate and long-term benefits for youth, their families, and communities.” By executive order and federal agency guidance, President Trump is now trying to deny those benefits to trans girls and women who want to participate in sports with the rest of their peers. The Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, Title IX, and Massachusetts anti-discrimination statutes prohibit schools, colleges, universities, and athletic organizations from following the new executive order. CONTINUE READING ›

What is the Current Status of Title IX and its Enforcement?

Published on: February 4, 2025 | by Naomi Shatz and Niamh Gibbons

In the last month, actions by the courts, the President, and Congress have significantly impacted and may further change how Title IX is enforced across the country.

Title IX: Background and Enforcement

Title IX is a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. It is one of the shortest laws on the books, with the operative provision stating: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Laws like this can be enforced in two ways: through the courts and through administrative agencies. Individuals have a right to bring lawsuits under Title IX in court, where it is the job of the court to interpret what the law means. In addition, federal agencies has enforcement powers to investigate and address violations of federal law. For Title IX, that agency enforcement power rests with the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice. People whose right to be free from discrimination in education have been violated can file complaints with those agencies, which can then investigate the educational institutions and impose corrective action, including the withholding of federal funds. The U.S. Department of Education issues regulations interpreting the laws it enforces and explaining how it will apply those laws when it engages in enforcement action. In 2020 the first Trump administration issued regulations overhauling Title IX enforcement; in 2024 the Biden administration issued a new set of regulations that was immediately challenged in federal courts in various red states. CONTINUE READING ›

Legal Challenges to New Title IX Regulations Continue—With One Snag

Published on: July 31, 2024 | by Tom Miller

The Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations were scheduled to go into force on August 1 of this year, but have already come under legal attack. We’ve previously covered two successful legal challenges that enjoined the enforcement of the new regulations in certain states. This week, however, other opponents of the regulations—including the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Caroline, joined by several private advocacy groups—encountered a setback when a federal judge in the Northern District of Alabama (appointed by President Trump) denied their request for a preliminary injunction. The next day, another Trump-appointed federal district judge in Oklahoma granted a preliminary injunction in a challenge brought by that state. CONTINUE READING ›

Legal Challenges to New Title IX Regulations Begin, Blocking Legal Protections for Gender Identity in Education

Published on: July 1, 2024 | by Tom Miller

Title IX, passed by Congress over fifty years ago as part of the Educational Amendments of 1972, begins with a deceptively simple sentence: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Since 1972, the law has been interpreted by the courts, by the Department of Education (the agency charged with implementing the law), and the Department of Justice (responsible for Title IX enforcement in federal agencies). This April, the Biden administration finalized a long-awaited set of new regulations, which will replace those put in place in 2020 under President Trump. Among other provisions, the new regulations radically change the procedures for reporting and adjudicating allegations of sexual misconduct at colleges and universities. The new regulations also make clear that the term “sex” as used in Title IX includes sexual orientation and gender identity. Before the Biden regulations go into force in August, however, they are already coming under legal attack. In June, two federal district courts, one in Kentucky and one in Louisiana, issued preliminary injunctions blocking the enforcement of the new regulations in ten states: Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

The plaintiffs included the affected states, plus an association of Christian teachers and a female student-athlete in the Kentucky case, and a group of local public schools boards in the Louisiana case. They primarily challenged the new regulations’ inclusion of discrimination based on gender identity within the ambit of discrimination “on the basis of sex,” with a view to its effects on primary and secondary education. Following the pattern of recent conservative attacks on trans and non-binary people, the plaintiffs objected to how the inclusion of gender identity would require public schools to allow students to use bathrooms and to play on sports teams associated with their gender identity, as well as potentially mandating that teachers and classmates use the pronouns used by a student themselves.

First Circuit Upholds Dress Code Prohibiting “There are Only Two Genders” Shirt

Published on: June 10, 2024 | by Naomi Shatz

Yesterday, the First Circuit issued its decision in L.M. v. Middleborough et al., a case we discussed previously on this blog. The case concerned whether a public middle school could prohibit a student from wearing a t-shirt that said “There are only two genders.” The district court had held that the school could, relying on the seminal case of Tinker v. DeMoines Independent Community School District. CONTINUE READING ›

First Circuit Hears Oral Argument in “There are Only Two Genders” T-Shirt Case

Published on: February 28, 2024 | by Naomi Shatz

Two weeks ago the First Circuit heard oral argument in a case that touches on some of the most hot-button issues in education law: student speech rights and discrimination against LGBTQ students. In L.M. v. Town of Middleborough, the Court must decide whether the Middleborough public schools could tell a student he was not allowed to wear a t-shirt that says: “There are only two genders.”

The case started in March 2023, when seventh grader L.M. wore a shirt to school that said “there are only two genders.” L.M. made this political statement against a backdrop – according to the school—of repeated concerns at the school about bullying of LGBTQ students and several students at the school contemplating or attempting to die by suicide, including students who attributed those actions to anti-LGBTQ experiences at the school. After receiving complaints from students and staff, the principal told L.M. he had to take the shirt off if he wanted to go back to class. L.M. declined, and his parents picked him up and took him home for the rest of the day. L.M. was not disciplined for wearing the shirt and wore other shirts with various political messages with no incident. In May 2023 L.M. wore the shirt to school again—this time with a piece of tape that read “censored” covering the words “only two.” L.M. was sent to the principal during his first class and removed the shirt rather than be excluded from school for the rest of the day.

The District Court Case

Massachusetts Court Overturns Expulsion of Harvard Student on Contract and Basic Fairness Grounds

Published on: January 4, 2024 | by David Russcol

A recent decision against Harvard University in favor of a student accused of sexual assault demonstrates a viable path to challenging student discipline decisions. As we have discussed previously, courts are wary of interfering with academic decisions of universities, but have been willing to hold schools accountable for failing to follow their own established policies in student disciplinary processes. Where a student handbook or other policy promises certain protections, courts will defend the reasonable expectations of students who encounter a process significantly less fair than what the university agreed to provide. These principles came into play in the “Dr. Doe” case, recently decided by the Massachusetts Superior Court.