Uruline High School and the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown are asking for summary judgment in a federal harassment lawsuit filed by the family of a female student.

The suit in question involves a female student filed under the pseudonym Daughter Doe, who was allegedly sexually harassed and physically assaulted by a football player between 2023 and 2024.

The suit alleges that the football player asked the player for nude photos and to have sex with her, and dragged her across rough turf during a summer gym class, causing injuries.

A Title IX complaint was filed in connection with this matter.

The school and the Diocese are asking that Judge Benita Pearson throw the alleged victim's complaint out, claiming that the alleged victim was not subjected to any incident of actionable sexual harassment because the conduct, in part, was not based on sex, nor was it severe, pervasive or objectively offensive to qualify as a Title IX violation.

The defendants cited a previous case that said in part:

"Schools are unlike the adult workplace and that children may regularly interact in a manner that would be unacceptable among adults. It is thus understandable that, in the school setting, students often engage in insults, banter, teasing, shoving, pushing and gender-specific conduct that is upsetting to the students subjected to it."

The defendants add that alleged peer-on-peer incidents in schools are not reportable under Ohio law, and that there was no way the school could have known that the player would drag the alleged victim across the turf, ask her out or stare at her.

"Plaintiffs cannot rely on inflammatory accusations regarding Ursuline's football team to meet their burden to plead plausible, negligence-based claims. District courts encountering similar cases have regularly dismissed claims at the pleading stage when a plaintiff fails to make well-pled factual allegations, and thus, fails to allege plausible claims for relief as a matter of law," the filing reads.

For example, the defendants allege that the alleged victim did tell soccer coach Roy Schmidt that she was involved in "an incident" but gave no further information, told Athletic Director John DeSantis that an unspecifed person "got rough" with her and texted her mother that she was "dragged" but provided no further details, only telling her more after she picked her up from the school.

Furthermore, the filing states that after the alleged victim told a guidance counselor that she was uncomfortable around the student when he asked her on a date in study hall, the school did investigate the incident and "issued additional, reasonable and appropriate disciple" to the student and the alleged victim never alleged any further advancements like this, only alleging that he would occassionally stare at her.

"To establish pervasiveness, it must be 'systemic or widespread, ... one incident is not enough.' Subjective offensiveness to the individual person is irrelevant," the filing reads.

Furthermore, the original suit accused the school of retaliating against the alleged victim by excessively punishing her for a text message prank on a teacher initiated by her friend.

However, the school denies these claims, describing the punishment she received as "reasonable, appropriate and wholly unrelated to her purported reporting of protected activity."

The defendants further stated that because this infraction occurred nearly a year after the alleged victim's most recent complaint about the student, that "severs any purported causal relationship between such actions."

The alleged victim's family responded to the defendants' filing, alleging that the defendants ignored the court's prefiling requirement's 20-page limit.

Furthermore, the plaintiffs allege that the defendants' legal counsel never provided the requested case law, never afforded them a meaningful opportunity to review and respond and that the two parties never meaningfully met and conferred. 

"Defendants did not seek this court's approval, much less have it granted - for the extra pages. For the second case in a row, defendants failed to follow the page limit requirements when filing motions for judgment on pleadings," the filing reads.

The plaintiffs are requesting that the court strike the defendants' motion and have them pay their attorney fees.

However, the defendants fired back, calling the plaintiffs' request "baseless," made in "bad faith" and based on a misconstruction of the court's local civil rules, the orders of the court and misstatements of facts.

The defendants deny claims that they never allowed the plaintiffs to meet and confer with them, stating that a lengthy meeting between the parties did occur back in January.

"Plaintiff's counsel and the Diocese Defendants' counsel had a robust conversation about controlling law of the issues that lasted approximately 30 minutes," the filing reads.

The defendants go on to claim that the plaintiffs asked them for case law in support of their positions, but the plaintiffs never shared any case law of their own.

You can read more about the original complaint and allegations in our related coverage below.

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