Ruling: U of A can be sued for off-campus assault by football player

The University of Arizona can be held responsible for an off-campus assault of a former student committed by an ex-UA football player, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday, reversing a 2022 lower court decision.

The ruling stems from a Title IX lawsuit Mackenzie Brown filed against the UA in 2017, a year after she was assaulted by then-Wildcat running back Orlando Bradford. He was eventually sentenced to five years in prison in the assault case.

In January 2022, a three-judge panel of the federal circuit court ruled against Brown. The court said then that the UA could not be responsible because the assault occurred off-campus.

On Monday, a full 11-judge panel of the 9th Circuit reversed the earlier ruling, saying the lawsuit against the UA can move forward.

The case started with Bradford’s arrest in 2016 after Brown, a UA student and his girlfriend at the time, told police he held her against her will in his off-campus apartment, assaulting her repeatedly over two days, the Arizona Daily Star previously reported.

Bradford was convicted on two counts of domestic violence-related aggravated assault in 2017 and sentenced to five years in prison. He was released under community supervision in December 2021.

Brown later sued the UA under Title IX, stating that the university’s actions and omissions in response to Bradford’s violent assaults on other female students deprived her of the full benefits of her education and an appropriate response would have prevented her assault, court records say.

The 2022 ruling by the 9th Circuit rejected Brown’s argument that UA officials could have prevented the assaults because they knew about previous reports about Bradford’s abuse toward other women on campus. While the UA exercised control over Bradford, it did not extend under Title IX to off-campus actions, the Star reported.

Title IX is the U.S. law that protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.

“There is undisputed evidence that the University had control over the off-campus housing in which Bradford was living while attending the University,” Judge William Fletcher, writing for the majority, said in Monday’s ruling. “After he finished his freshman year, Bradford moved into another off-campus house with other members of the football team. The University and football program allowed Bradford and his teammates to live off campus only with the permission of their coaches.”

The evidence in the record supports that university officials “had actual knowledge or notice of Bradford’s violent assaults and that Erika Barnes, the university’s Title IX liaison within the athletics department, was an official who had authority to address Bradford’s assaults and to institute corrective measures. Barnes is the executive senior associate athletic director for the UA.

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Before Brown’s assault happened, university officials learned of Bradford’s violent assaults on two other students during his freshman year, the ruling said. The university issued a “no contact order” and never told the athletic director or football coaches about his assaults.

According to the ruling, if university officials had told Bradford’s coaches of his violent assaults on the students, Bradford would have lost his football scholarship, been kicked off the football team, likely been expelled from the university by the end of his freshman year and the assaults at the off-campus house “would have never occurred.”

Barnes reported to Greg Byrne, the UA athletic director at the time, that Bradford had yelled and banged on a student’s doom room door for almost two hours, but did not report other instances including his repeated violent assaults on the two students, his threat to send compromising pictures of one of the victims to her family members if she reported the violence, and that his roommate warned one of the victims that he was a “violent person,” the ruling said.

“A reasonable factfinder also could conclude that Barnes’s reporting only Bradford’s yelling and banging on Student A’s dormitory room door while failing to report his much more serious behavior was ‘clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances,’” Fletcher wrote.

Three judges dissented in the case, stating that the university had no control over the off-campus house where the assault happened.

The UA said it does not comment on pending litigation.

In a news release, Brown’s attorneys called the reversal a “sweeping victory for student survivors across the country.”

“Today’s opinion is a victory for Mackenzie and for student survivors across the country,” said Alexandra Brodsky, a staff attorney at Public Justice. “Gender violence has grave effects on students’ access to education. For that reason, the civil rights law Title IX requires schools to address known abuse. And as the Ninth Circuit explained today, a school’s power to stop violence — and its responsibility to do so — doesn’t stop at the campus boundary.”

Isabel Humphrey, another of Brown’s attorneys, said she is pleased they will have the opportunity to present her case to a jury.