HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) Lawyers for former Yale basketball captain Jack Montague are seeking a court order that would allow him to return to class while he fights his expulsion for what the university says was sexual misconduct.
The senior point guard was thrown out of Yale in February after a university committee upheld a sexual assault complaint.
Montague says the October 2014 sexual encounter was consensual, and no criminal charges were brought.
He filed a federal lawsuit in June, arguing the school misled and coerced the accuser into cooperating in the complaint. The lawsuit and the motion filed Monday afternoon also allege the school wanted to make an example of the popular athlete.
”He has already suffered, and continues to suffer, irreparable injury – his ability to complete his education and receive the degree he had all but earned prior to his expulsion hangs in the balance, and his employment prospects are dim,” attorney Max Stern wrote in the new court filing. ”Only immediate relief in the form of full reinstatement as a student at Yale can rectify this damage and restore him to the position he was in prior to Yale’s unlawful conduct.”
Yale spokesman Tom Conroy called the lawsuit ”factually inaccurate and legally baseless” and said the school’s attorneys will oppose the motion.
The complaint was brought in 2015 after a friend of the woman went to a school official who ensures Yale’s compliance with Title IX, the federal law designed to prevent gender discrimination in education.
The lawsuit alleges the Title IX officer brought the complaint despite being told the woman did not believe Montague heard her when she tried to end their sexual encounter. The woman cooperated only after the Title IX officer informed her that Montague had previously received counseling after an incident involving another woman, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges the school didn’t tell her that case involved him shoving a paper plate down someone’s shirt following a drunken argument outside a pizza parlor.
The school countered that the woman was never ”affirmatively misled by the defendants into participating in a formal complaint process initiated by Yale.”
The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial no earlier than February.
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