The plaintiffs sued their daughter’s college under Title IX after the daughter’s boyfriend murdered her in her dorm room. The college maintained a Title IX Policy, which defined sexual misconduct to include dating and domestic violence. Any conduct constituting sexual misconduct under this policy was considered a violation of Title IX. And before the student’s death, she and her boyfriend had fought on campus, necessitating intervention by a resident assistant. The District Court ruled that the college lacked the requisite notice because neither the Third Circuit nor the Supreme Court had extended Title IX liability to situations in which a federal funding recipient was deliberately indifferent to sexual harassment committed by a student’s nonstudent guest. The Third Circuit reviewed the Supreme Court’s precedent in Gebser v. Lago Vista Indep. Sch. Dist., Davis ex rel. v. Monroe Cnty. Bd. of Educ., and Jackson v. Birmingham Bd. of Educ. Against the backdrop of those cases, the Court concluded that the District Court erred in holding that the college lacked adequate notice that it could be held monetarily liable under Title IX for its deliberate indifference to a nonstudent’s conduct. Furthermore, the Court ruled that there were material issues of fact in contention.
