USC law professor sues university for mishandling Title IX complaint

Gould School of Law Professor Camille Rich is suing the university for ignoring her Title IX complaints that her ex-husband was having an extramarital affair with a student. The lawsuit alleges her complaints then led to the school retaliating by denying her disability accommodations.

In a complaint filed on June 26, Rich alleges that the university demonstrated a “callous disregard of the Tyndall Resolution provisions” through its alleged mishandling of and lack of investigation into her 2019 Title IX complaint. Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational programs. Her claim was against her ex-husband, Professor Stephen M. Rich, who is now a vice dean of the school.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights developed the Tyndall Resolution after finding USC violated Title IX regulations in its handling of sexual abuse claims against Dr. George Tyndall. Tyndall was a gynecologist who worked in the school’s student health center for nearly 30 years and was investigated as the largest perpetrator of sexual abuse in Los Angeles history. The university was forced to pay more than $1 billion in a settlement.

The resolution forced the university to move Title IX operations out of the Office of Legal Affairs and Professionalism, requiring Title IX complaints to be evaluated and resolved independently from the university council. Additionally, the university was required to track Title IX reports, expand sexual harassment training and be monitored by the Civil Rights office for three years.

Camille Rich also claims that university officials — including former law school dean and current Provost Andrew Guzman — retaliated against her by denying her request to cap her class size. The lawsuit also claims that USC denied her PTSD leave, refused to restore lost pay for time spent dealing with her trauma and gave her poor performance reviews that hindered her return.

Guzman was also given charge of Camille Rich’s Title IX complaints, which the lawsuit states is an apparent “conflict of interest,” as Guzman “maintained a close personal and professional relationship with Professor [Stephen] Montgomery Rich.”

In a statement to Annenberg Media, the university wrote, “The lawsuit has no legal merit. We look forward to defending the university’s position in court.”

USC hired Camille Rich as a tenured track professor in the law school in 2007 and hired Stephen Rich as a “trailing spouse.”

The couple divorced in 2019, four years after separating. Camille Rich’s Title IX complaints were filed while the divorce proceedings were ongoing. In her lawsuit, Camille Rich claimed that during this period, Stephen Rich attempted to defame her to her colleagues and “painted himself the tormented victim in the situation with the intent of incentivising his colleagues to pressure Professor Rich into returning to her marriage.”

Despite this, Camille Rich claimed that no faculty members reported his behavior.

Camille Rich alleged that she developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from years of dealing with a hostile work environment, which she said worsened when she learned that Stephen Rich had an ongoing affair with a student, with whom he fathered children.

According to the lawsuit, Stephen Rich later married the student, and the couple had twins in March 2020 — implying that at the time of Camille Rich’s July 19, 2019, complaints, the student was likely already pregnant.

USC Policies and Policy Governance explicitly prohibit faculty from having any intimate, romantic, or sexual relationships, even if consensual, with any student they teach, train, supervise or evaluate. Such relationships are “strongly discouraged” even when no supervisory relationship exists, according to USC’s “Prohibited Relationships With Students” policy.

Then-dean of the USC Gould School of Law Andrew T. Guzman allegedly sent Stephen Rich a congratulatory email upon the birth of his children, less than one month after USC entered the Tyndall Resolution on February 27, 2020.

Guzman began overseeing Camille Rich’s complaints on January 28, 2020, meaning that he was already overseeing the complaint at the time of the congratulatory email.

In the lawsuit, Camille Rich said that multiple students “offered themselves to [her] for sex as a means to ‘get back at’ Professor Montgomery Rich.”

It was after this that she filed two complaints against Stephen Rich, arguing that he had violated the school’s discrimination policies and created a hostile work environment.

Camille Rich claims in the suit that USC mishandled her complaints against Stephen Rich, failing to properly investigate her claims against him and inappropriately transferring her complaint out of the Office of Equity and Diversity. She claims that Stephen Rich was not interviewed during the investigation. Her lawsuit describes the process as a “perfunctory and sham inquiry,” asserting that the Office of Equity and Diversity dismissed the complaint as “unfounded without further inquiry.” The lawsuit contends that Guzman’s relationship with Stephen Rich made it impossible for him to act neutrally.

The Tyndall Resolution was adopted 30 days after Guzman took on the complaints, which required that investigations of sexual misconduct be handled by an independent team of investigators. The lawsuit alleges that “Contrary to the unequivocally clear mandates of the Tyndall Resolution, [then] Dean Guzman retained control of Professor Rich’s Title IX complaint, and effectively buried and warehoused Professor Rich’s complaint in his office.”

Despite the Resolution’s prohibition on university administrators conducting investigations of sexual misconduct, especially under circumstances of vested interests, Guzman retained direct control of Camille Rich’s complaints, according to the filing. Guzman declared on September 27, 2020, that he had found no evidence to support Camille Rich’s complaint.

Within two years of the original complaint, USC’s new Title IX director, Catherine Spear, concluded the matter by merely “counseling [Guzman and Stephen Rich] on best practices,” according to the complaint.

In her lawsuit, Camille Rich brings 10 claims against USC, including five counts of discrimination, two failures to accommodate claims, two retaliation claims and one deliberate indifference claim. She alleged that the university discriminated against her based on gender, violating her Title VII rights under the Civil Rights Act, Title IX Rights and California Fair Employment and Housing Act. Camille Rich also claimed disability discrimination, failure to accommodate and retaliation under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the California Fair Housing Act.

As of publication, Camille Rich, Stephen Rich and Guzman did not respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit is ongoing.

Scott Hills contributed to this story.