College Arrests & Title IX Hearings

You have been arrested on campus. The police took you to the station. You are facing criminal charges that could mean jail time, a permanent record, and consequences that will follow you for years. This feels like your only problem. Welcome to Spodek Law Group. Our goal is to tell you something that changes everything: you actually have two problems running in parallel, and the one you are not focused on is going to destroy you first.

While you are thinking about the criminal case - the charges, the evidence, your constitutional rights - your university has already started a Title IX investigation. That investigation will not wait for the criminal case to resolve. It will not pause while your criminal defense attorney builds your case. It operates on a completely different timeline with completely different rules. The criminal case might take a year or more to reach trial. The Title IX investigation will conclude in approximately sixty days.

Todd Spodek founded this firm on one principle: students deserve to understand exactly what they are facing before they make any decisions. What you are facing is a two-front war. The arrest drew all your attention. But the Title IX proceeding - faster, with a lower standard of proof, and without the constitutional protections you think you have - is the one that will expel you before the criminal case even reaches a courtroom.

Two Systems, One Student: Why the Arrest Isn't Your Only Problem

Heres the thing that nobody explains to students when they get arrested on campus. Criminal investigations and Title IX investigations run in parallel. The police are building their case. The university Title IX office is building theirs. These two processes are not connected in the way you probly assume. They do not share evidence automaticaly. They do not coordinate their timelines. They do not use the same rules or the same standards.

The criminal justice system gives you constitutional protections that have evolved over centuries of legal precedent. You have the right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment. You have the right to confront your accuser and cross-examine witnesses under the Sixth Amendment. You have the right to see all the evidence against you before trial through the discovery process. You have the presumption of innocence - the government must prove your guilt. The prosecution must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a standard that means approximately ninety percent certainty or higher.

The Title IX system gives you almost none of that. Title IX investigations are not criminal proceedings. They are administrative processes designed to ensure schools comply with federal civil rights law. The rules that protect criminal defendants don't automatically apply to campus disciplinary hearings. The constitutional rights you think you have dont follow you into a Title IX hearing room.

And here's the part that makes this especially dangerous. The outcome of a Title IX proceeding can be just as devastating as a criminal conviction. Expulsion. A marked transcript that follows you to every graduate school application and every future employer who runs a background check. The complete end of your college education and everything that was supposed to come after it - the career, the professional licenses, the life you were building.

Think about what that means. The process with fewer protections can produce consequences that are essentialy equivalent in their destruction of your future.

60 Days vs. 60 Months: The Timeline That Expels You First

Here's something that makes students and their families absolutely furious when they finally understand the full picture. Schools are expected to resolve Title IX complaints in approximately sixty days. Sixty days from the complaint being filed to the final decision being issued. Some schools move even faster than that - acting within weeks of an allegation being made, especialy when there is pressure from the complaining party or media attention on the case.

Criminal cases take months. Often years. The preliminary hearing process, the discovery phase where both sides exchange evidence, the pretrial motions, the plea negotiations, the trial preparation - all of that takes substantial time. A criminal sexual assault case might not reach trial for eighteen months or longer after the initial arrest. Complex cases can take even longer, especially if there are multiple charges or multiple defendants involved.

By the time your criminal defense attorney is ready to present your case to a jury and actually fight the charges, you could already be expelled from the university, your academic transcript permanently marked with the finding, your college career completely over. The Title IX process will have concluded while the criminal case was still in its early stages.

Think about what this means practicaly for a student in this situation. You get arrested in September of your junior year. The criminal case probly wont go to trial until the following spring or even later. But the Title IX investigation concludes in November. By December, you have been found responsible under the preponderance of the evidence standard and expelled from the university. By January, you are desperately trying to transfer to another school - but your transcript shows the Title IX finding and the expulsion. Other schools see that notation and do not want to take the risk of admitting you. Your educational future is effectively over before the criminal case has even reached the preliminary hearing stage.

This is why students who focus exclusively on the criminal case wake up expelled. The wrong process moves faster. By the time you realize this, its often too late to fix it.

51% vs. 90%: Why Title IX Convicts When Courts Cant

The standard of proof in most Title IX proceedings is "preponderance of the evidence" - which means the hearing panel only needs to believe that it is more likely than not that the alleged conduct occurred. More likely than not. Fifty-one percent certainty. Basicly a coin flip plus a feather is enough to find you responsible and end your education.

Compare that to the criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" - a completely different measuring stick. Legal scholars and courts generally agree this standard means approximately ninety percent certainty or higher. To convict you criminally, a jury must be almost certain you committed the offense. To find you responsible under Title IX, a panel of professors and administrators - people with limited legal training who have taken some compliance workshops - only needs to think it's slightly more probable than not that you did what you are accused of doing.

Heres the practical implication of this gap. Students can be found responsible in Title IX proceedings and then aquitted in criminal trials for the exact same underlying conduct. The evidence might be completely insufficient to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt - meaning a court finds you not guilty - but that same evidence was sufficient to meet the much lower preponderance standard used in the university proceeding. You can win the criminal case and still lose your education because the two systems use fundamentally different measuring sticks.

At Spodek Law Group, we have seen this pattern play out repeatedly with devastating consequences. The criminal charges get dismissed or substantialy reduced becuase the evidence simply isnt strong enough to support a criminal conviction. But the university already found the student responsible under its lower evidentiary standard months earlier. The student is already expelled. The transcript is already marked. The damage is already done and cannot be undone. Winning the criminal case doesnt reverse the expulsion. It does not restore your enrollment. It does not erase the notation on your permanent record.

Let that sink in. You can be found not guilty in a court of law and still remain expelled from your university.

The Rights That Don't Follow You to Campus

Heres the constitutional trap that destroys students who dont understand how the two-track system actualy works in practice.

In a criminal case, your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent means exactly what it says - you can refuse to answer questions from police and prosecutors, and they cannot use your silence against you at trial. A jury cannot be instructed to infer guilt from your refusal to testify in your own defense. Your silence is constitutionally protected.

In a Title IX proceeding, your silence can absolutely be used against you. Administrative hearings are not criminal trials. The constitutional protections against adverse inference - the legal term for drawing negative conclusions from someone's refusal to speak or participate - don't apply the same way in campus disciplinary proceedings. If you refuse to participate in the Title IX investigation or decline to answer questions, the hearing panel can consider that refusal as a factor when making their determination.

This creates an impossible strategic situation for students facing both criminal and Title IX proceedings simultaneously. Your criminal defense attorney tells you not to talk to anyone about the case - thats standard and good advice for protecting your criminal case. But your silence in the Title IX investigation can be held against you and interpreted as evidence of responsibility. The strategy that protects you in one proceeding activly damages you in the other.

But wait - it actualy gets even worse than that. Statements you make in Title IX proceedings can potentialy be used in the criminal case against you. If you decide to talk to the Title IX investigator in an attempt to explain your side of the story and defend yourself, those statements are recorded and preserved in the universitys files. The criminal prosecutor can subpoena those Title IX records. Any inconsistencies between what you told the Title IX office during the investigation and what your criminal defense argues at trial can be used to destroy your credibilty with the jury.

The two systems do not just fail to protect you equally - they actively work against each other in ways that trap students who do not understand the dynamics. What helps you in one proceeding often hurts you in the other. This is precisely why students need separate representation for each proceeding, with both attorneys coordinating their strategies extremely carefully to avoid these landmines.

Doe v. Purdue, Doe v. George Mason: What Happens Without Defense

These arent hypothetical concerns or theoretical legal problems. Federal courts across the country are filled with lawsuits from students who were expelled in Title IX proceedings that denied them basic due process protections.

In Doe v. Purdue University, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals found that a university dean expelled a medical student without even giving him the opportunity to respond to the final allegations against him. The Committee that heard his case informed the Dean that the student had "gave false or incomplete information" during the proceeding. Based on that finding alone, the Dean expelled him from medical school permanently - without ever letting the student present his position or respond to that characterization. The appeals court found this process to be a violation of due process and sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.

The Doe v. George Mason case is even more disturbing in what it reveals about how these proceedings can go wrong. A student was actualy found "not responsible" by the initial hearing panel - he won at the first level of the universitys own process. But on appeal, a university administrator reversed that finding and expelled him anyway. The reason given? The administrator based his decision on other sexual encounters "about which plaintiff had no notice were in issue." The student was expelled for conduct that wasnt even part of the original charges he was defending against. He had no opportunity to defend against allegations he didnt even know existed until after he was already expelled.

Between 2011 and 2020, students filed more than two hundred and thirty lawsuits against colleges and universities for allegedley unfair Title IX procedures. By 2016, approximately one due process lawsuit was being filed per week by students who felt they had been denied basic fairness. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has documented case after case where students were "routinely denied even the most basic elements of a fair hearing" including adequate notice of charges and meaningful opportunity to be heard.

These lawsuits sometimes succeed. Students sometimes win their legal challenges. But heres the cruel reality - by the time a federal court rules that your due process rights were violated, you have already been expelled. You have already lost months or years of your education. The vindication comes too late to undo the practical damage that has already been done to your life and your future.

Expelled Without an Arrest: When Title IX Acts Alone

Here's something else that surprises students who assume the criminal case is their main problem: Title IX can completely destroy your education even if you are never criminally charged at all.

The criminal justice system and the Title IX system operate independantly of each other. A prosecutor might review the evidence and decide not to file criminal charges becuase the evidence simply isnt strong enough to support a criminal conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. That prosecutorial decision has absolutly no effect on the Title IX proceeding. The university can still investigate, still hold a hearing, still find you responsible under the much lower preponderance standard, and still expel you permanently.

Students have been expelled from universities across the country when no criminal charges were ever brought against them whatsoever. The evidence wasnt sufficient to convince a prosecutor to even pursue the criminal case - but it was sufficient to end a students education under the universitys administrative process. Some students have been expelled based on Title IX findings alone, without any involvement from law enforcement at any point.

This independance cuts both ways. If you are aquitted in criminal court - found completly not guilty by a jury after a full trial where you had all your constitutional protections - that aquital has no binding effect on the Title IX finding. You can be found not guilty criminaly and still remain expelled based on the earlier Title IX decision that used different rules and a different standard. The two systems do not recognize or defer to each others conclusions.

Fighting on Two Fronts: What Defense Actually Looks Like

If you are facing both criminal charges and a Title IX investigation simultaneously, you need coordinated defense on both fronts - and you need it immediately, not after one process or the other has already concluded.

The criminal case requires a criminal defense attorney who understands sexual assault cases, evidence rules, constitutional protections, and trial strategy. The Title IX case requires someone who understands campus disciplinary procedures, education law, and the specific federal regulations that govern how schools must conduct these proceedings. Sometimes these can be the same attorney who practices in both areas. Often they are different attorneys who must coordinate their strategies carefully to avoid conflicts.

The coordination between these attorneys is absolutely critical. What you say in one proceeding affects the other. The timing of each process creates complex strategic considerations. Decisions made in the Title IX investigation - whether to participate activly, what statements to make, what evidence to present and what to withhold - must account for their potential impact on the pending criminal case. Decisions made in the criminal case must similarly consider the parallel Title IX proceeding.

At Spodek Law Group, we understand that students facing these situations need more than generic legal advice about either system in isolation. They need attorneys who understand how these two systems interact with each other, where the traps and conflicts are, and how to navigate both proceedings simultaneously without sacrificing one for the other. We handle Title IX defense for students nationwide, and we work with criminal defense counsel to ensure that your defense in each proceeding supports rather than undermines the other.

The school is not there to help you navigate this. As one legal guide bluntly states, universities "have a huge incentive to protect their federal funding" - and responding quickly and aggressively to Title IX complaints is how they demonstrate compliance and protect that funding. Your individual interests and the institutions institutional interests are not aligned.

You have been arrested. You have a Title IX investigation proceeding against you simultaneously. The criminal case will take months or years to reach resolution. The Title IX case will conclude in weeks. One system gives you constitutional rights. The other does not. One requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. One only requires preponderance.

Call us at 212-300-5196. The consultation is free. The mistake of focusing only on the arrest could cost you everything you have worked to build.

Every day you wait, the Title IX clock keeps running. Evidence that could help your defense is disappearing. Witnesses who could support your account are forgetting details. The process that will expel you is moving forward whether you participate or not. Two systems. Two completely different sets of rules. One student who needs to fight effectivly on both fronts. Thats the reality. Act accordingly.