August 24, 2006
In August 2006 the ACLU Women’s Rights Project and Racial Justice Program, joined by the ACLU of Colorado, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., Legal Momentum, the National Partnership for Women and Families, and many other leading civil rights and women’s rights organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the matter of
Simpson v. University of Colorado on behalf of the appellants Lisa Simpson and Anne Gilmore. Ms. Simpson and Ms. Gilmore were sexually assaulted by University of Colorado football players and recruits while they were students at the school. They sued the University for sexual harassment, but lost in the trial court. The ACLU brief argued that the University is liable under Title IX for the sexual assault of the appellants because the University was on notice of a pattern of sexual assault and harassment in the football program and acted with deliberate indifference to the ongoing culture of hostility and abuse of women.
