Federal appeals court rules against Ohio State, says Strauss lawsuits can move forward

Those sexually abused by former Ohio State University doctor Richard Strauss are free to move forward with lawsuits against the university, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, located in Cincinnati, rejected Ohio State's request for an en banc review, stating "the issues raised in the petition were fully considered upon the original submission and decision of the case."

Fewer than half of the judges voted to review the case again, effectively ending the university's options to have Strauss survivors' lawsuits thrown out on the premise that the statute of limitations had already passed.

In September, Ohio State filed an unusual court request in an effort to overturn an appeals court decision from just a week earlier that had revived unsettled lawsuits against the university related to sexual abuse by Strauss.

That filing, called an en banc review, requested the case be heard before all 16 active judges of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court rather than by a small panel of judges.

Instead, the court affirmed its earlier ruling from Sept. 14, when two members of a three-judge panel ordered that the cases could move to trial.

U.S. Circuit Court Judge Karen Nelson Moore, writing for the majority decision of the panel at that time, ruled in favor of the lawsuits moving forward because of plausible evidence that Ohio State knew Strauss was abusing students and covered it up, and agreed that the two-year statute of limitations on civil sexual abuse cases should start when Strauss’ abuse became public.

Moore's opinion Wednesday continued in that same spirit.

"Two physicians employed by Ohio State 'stated that they did not know of "any way" that "any Ohio State student" could have known that Ohio State knew about Strauss’s abuse and nonetheless failed to "get rid of" him,'" Moore said. "That is because Ohio State administrators engaged in a long-standing cover up of Strauss’s behavior by hiding what they knew about his abuse, falsifying Strauss’s performance reviews, destroyingmedical records, shredding files relating to Strauss’s abuse, and actively misleading students about Strauss and Ohio State’s knowledge of his abuse."

Moore went on to say that Ohio State's desired outcome would have "ignored Title IX’s plain language and eviscerated Title IX’s purpose by creating a perverse incentive for institutions to run out the clock on the limitations period by covering up sexual abuse"

"For the reasons explained more fully in the panel majority opinion, this case involved simply a straightforward application of precedent to a highly fact-bound case, and thus this court appropriately declined en banc review," Moore said.

Ohio State spokesman Ben Johnson said the university is reviewing the court's decision and had no other comment at the time.

In a statement after the decision, attorneys with Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP; Scott Elliot Smith, LPA; and Public Justice representing the survivors said Wednesday's decision will pave the way for hundreds of Strauss survivors "to hold Ohio State accountable for its decades of concealing and enabling Strauss’s abuse."

"The road may be long, but we are one step closer to justice," they said. "No matter how long Ohio State delays this case, the university will eventually be held to account for its wrongdoing.”

Sheridan Hendrix is a higher education reporter for The Columbus Dispatch. Sign up for her Mobile Newsroom newsletter here and Extra Credit, her education newsletter, here.

shendrix@dispatch.com

@sheridan120

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Appeals court rules against Ohio State in Strauss lawsuit appeal