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A jury awarded a Baylor University alumna $270,000 in a federal civil lawsuit alleging that the institution’s negligence put her at risk of assault and that employees didn’t respond appropriately to her 2014 reports that a football player had physically assaulted her three times, ESPN reported.
The jury also found Baylor in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, but the $270,000 was awarded solely for the negligence claim. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman dismissed a claim of gross negligence—which must be deliberate or reckless—against the university and two former athletics officials named in the lawsuit.
Dolores Lozano filed the lawsuit in 2016, alleging that she told numerous university officials about being physically assaulted and that they failed to help her understand her options to “seek help and pursue further investigation.” The university’s attorney, Julie Springer, argued unsuccessfully that the university had indeed offered Lozano support.
A 2016 investigation by the law firm Pepper Hamilton uncovered severe institutional failure to comply with Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education, by covering up assaults involving the football team; multiple lawsuits from that time have since been settled, including one filed in 2016 involving 15 women that finally settled for an undisclosed amount just last month. The Pepper Hamilton report was cited in both lawyers’ testimony.
