A woman identified as Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit on Sept. 16, alleging that she was sexually assaulted, gang-raped, and pressured to take drugs and drink alcohol by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity on the night of Oct. 19, 2024. The lawsuit is filed against the fraternity, Doe’s sorority chapter, and Cornell University; it names Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris, and Scott Kretzschmar as defendants. Prosecutors said this week they were reopening a criminal investigation into the case after declining to press charges originally.
When sexual assault allegations of this kind occur on campus, they can be addressed in three distinct ways: through school disciplinary proceedings, criminal proceedings, and civil lawsuits.
Here’s what to know about how the case was handled—by Cornell and the criminal justice system—before, and what could happen next.
Title IX is a law dating back to 1972 that is meant to, among other things, ensure that a college investigates when there is sexual assault on campus. Central to this premise is that Title IX is meant to ensure that sexual violence does not impede a student’s access to education.
Doe’s attorney has said that Cornell expelled two of the seven accused students. Cornell has confirmed that its disciplinary process resulted in expulsions and suspensions, but has not disclosed individual outcomes. The lawsuit alleges negligence, breach of contract, and violations of New York law.
“We take sexual violence extremely seriously,” the Sept. 21 statement said. “The Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault was launched shortly after this incident and issued a REPORT in March 2026.”
But women’s rights advocates believe that the school might not have fulfilled its legal obligations in investigating the incident and taking appropriate actions toward those involved.
What does Title IX require universities to do about sexual assault?
Since Title IX was introduced, courts have found that the law requires institutions to ensure that sexual violence does not impede a student’s access to education.
According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), students who experience sexual assault are more likely to earn lower GPAs in school and are more likely to drop out of school altogether.
“She was trying to leave the institution; she didn’t want to be there,” Patel says.
Giuffra also told CNN that Doe is no longer in college as of 2026.
Regardless, the situation raises questions about what more schools can do for students, Patel says, providing some examples of the types of questions that a university might ask in the aftermath of this kind of incident: “Does she need extensions on exams? Does she need some time off, some leave? Does she need a housing shift if the fraternity house and her sorority house are close together? Does she need counseling? Did they provide a stay away order? What kind of support were they giving her to make sure she wouldn’t have to be retriggered and traumatized by running into them?”
Cornell University publicly disclosed that it was investigating the allegation on Nov. 8, 2024, the same day Doe went to the police, according to the lawsuit. The university sent an alert to students regarding a report of sexual assault and coercion into taking drugs at a fraternity house. The same day, Cornell suspended the Chi Phi fraternity.
“The university’s Title IX investigation was conducted over several months and included hearings where a panel of trained faculty and staff heard evidence over multiple days,” the university’s statement continued. “The complainant and respondents had the opportunity to testify and present evidence in the university’s investigation.”
The Biden Administration had expanded Title IX regulations in April 2024—taking effect in August 2024—broadening the definition of sexual harassment and extending federal protections.
“The Trump rule essentially narrowed the definition of sexual harassment to make it more burdensome for a complainant to actually complain of something that meets a definition,” Patel says of the differences between the Biden-era and Trump-era Title IX rules.
“It also sets limits on what schools can respond to under Title IX based on the location of the assault, harassment, and based on the complainant’s status,” she adds. “This is going a huge step backwards because it is allowing schools to do less in the face of sexual assault.”
Patel argues that a university’s ability to prevent and respond to sexual assault is hindered by this “ping-ponging of Title IX protections based on the administration that’s in power.”
Nancy Cantalupo, an assistant professor at Wayne State University Law School, says that this type of case highlights issues within the government itself—what she describes as “failures of those in the current administration and certain previous administrations, as well as the courts—led by the U.S. Supreme Court—to interpret and enforce Title IX in a manner that is consistent with Title IX’s purposes.”
How do Title IX investigations differ from criminal cases?
Survivor advocates describe Title IX as an alternative form of recourse to the criminal legal system, emphasizing its capacity to address other harms of sexual violence, including its impact on educational access. In written testimony to a Senate roundtable discussion of Title IX in 2014, the Victim Rights Law Center said the law “is a mechanism to enforce a victim’s civil rights and not a tool of the criminal justice system.”
The two processes also apply different standards of proof, at times leading a prosecutor to decline charges because they do not believe the evidence can support a criminal conviction.
“There is no way,” she added, “according to [Doe’s] statement in 2024, that any prosecutor would have brought charges.”
“The current law sees it in black and white: Either you’re stone cold sober or you’re totally comatose,” says Ann Olivarius, an attorney who represents victims of sexual misconduct and discrimination in employment. “Life is not like that, and certainly not in college. We all know how easily our faculties are undermined by drugs and alcohol.”
The law’s limitations have been a focal point of the debate over whether the prosecutor should, or could, have brought charges in 2024.
According to Van Houten, Doe’s sworn statement in November 2024 “did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped. On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”
Olivarius, who was also a plaintiff in the landmark Alexander v. Yale case nearly half a century ago that established sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination under Title IX, tells TIME that the nature of the law can also lead to victim-blaming questions: “They say to her, ‘Were you drunk? Why did you drink?’ … It’s all on her.
Legal advocates have for years argued that the law’s limitations underscore the need for reform, especially as advocacy efforts have increasingly spotlighted how intoxication can impair a person’s ability to consent to sex.
Have there been efforts to change the law?
A bill addressing the voluntary intoxication exclusion passed the state Senate unanimously in June, but remains stalled in the Assembly. Earlier versions passed the Senate in 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025, but none passed the Assembly. The proposals to change the law date back to legislation introduced by then-Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, a Democrat, in 2019.
Several states have changed their laws in recent years to also protect victims incapacitated by voluntary intoxication.
Michigan also revised its laws in 2023 to broaden its definition of mental incapacitation. Last year, Texas expanded its law to cover sexual acts committed when the perpetrator knows the other person is too impaired to consent, regardless of how that person became intoxicated.
What happens next in the Cornell sexual assault case?
There are three possible ways that this case may move forward.
After the woman’s initial police report, she reportedly told police a week later that she was “completely and totally incapacitated,” and could “say with 100% confidence I was raped.” A transcript obtained by CBS of a police interview on Nov. 14 and 15, 2024, showed that the woman described being “physically hit very, very hard,” and describing the incident as “coercion.” Van Houten told CBS that he had not seen the transcript of the interview, and that his office had relied on the sworn statement when it declined to bring charges.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday also called for an independent investigation into how Cornell University handled the allegations when they arose in 2024.
The individuals who might be tasked with such an investigation have yet to be named; however, the outcomes could help shape how similar investigations into sexual assault cases are handled on campuses both in and beyond New York.
“This case,” Olivarius tells TIME, “ may change the conversation.”
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