Portz v. St. Cloud State University
- John Tunheim
- 0:16-cv-01115
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 7
In Portz v. St. Cloud State University, Judge Tunheim denied four exclusion motions and reserved judgment on one before the Title IX trial.
The order affected the plaintiffs and SCSU by determining that several categories of evidence could be presented or considered at the upcoming Title IX trial, while reserving judgment on the motion concerning Timothy O’Brien’s testimony.
What happened
In Portz v. St. Cloud State University, the plaintiffs claimed that St. Cloud State University and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities discriminated against female student-athletes under Title IX. The court had already dismissed some claims, including the claim about athletic financial assistance, and a trial was scheduled.
The court denied four defense motions seeking to exclude evidence about facility inspections, historical Title IX compliance, the levels-of-competition test, and testimony from Morris Kurtz and Sue Becker. The court also reserved judgment on the plaintiffs’ motion to limit expert Timothy O’Brien’s testimony.
Judge Tunheim explained that the trial would be decided by the court rather than a jury, allowing the court to assess the evidence’s proper weight and avoid unfair prejudice. The order addressed only the parties’ requests about what evidence could be presented at trial.
The detailed version
- Portz v. St. Cloud State University · No. 0:16-cv-01115
- John Tunheim
- Nov. 21, 2018
Background
Alexie Portz, Jill Kedrowski, Abigail Kantor, Marilia Roque Diversi, Fernanda Quintino Dos Santos, Maria Hauer, Haley Bock, Kaitlyn Babich, Anna Lindell, and Kiersten Rohde sued St. Cloud State University and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, collectively referred to in the opinion as SCSU. They alleged that SCSU violated Title IX by unequally allocating athletic-participation opportunities to female students and by providing unequal treatment and benefits to female student-athletes.
The court had previously dismissed Count 2, concerning unequal allocation of athletic-related financial assistance under Title IX; Count 4, concerning sex discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment; and the plaintiffs’ claim for damages. The court had also granted summary judgment for SCSU on the athletic-financial-assistance allocation claim and dismissed that claim with prejudice. The remaining trial issues concerned athletic-participation opportunities and athletic treatment and benefits. Trial was scheduled to begin on November 26, 2018, and the case was to be tried to the court without a jury.
Defense Motions in Limine
A motion in limine is a request made before trial to limit or exclude evidence.
The court denied SCSU’s motion to exclude historical evidence about whether it complied with Title IX’s requirement to effectively accommodate students’ athletic interests and abilities before the 2016–17 academic year. The court held that this evidence was relevant to SCSU’s past compliance, which remained an issue for trial. It also denied SCSU’s motion to exclude all testimony from Morris Kurtz and Sue Becker. The court explained that its earlier decision concerning their testimony addressed using past violations to prove current violations, not whether their testimony was unfairly prejudicial concerning past compliance.
The court denied SCSU’s motion to exclude evidence about the levels-of-competition test. The opinion describes that test as one of two mandatory tests used by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to assess Title IX compliance. Because whether SCSU satisfied the test was an issue for trial, the court concluded that the related evidence should not be excluded.
The court also denied SCSU’s motion to exclude information from the plaintiffs’ July 2018 inspections of SCSU athletic facilities. SCSU argued that the inspections violated the scheduling order and did not follow the notice procedures in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34. The court excused the scheduling-order violation because SCSU had not shown prejudice and had received the inspection information, photographs, and a supplemental expert report more than two months before the order. The court also declined to exclude the evidence under Rule 34 because the plaintiffs were accompanied by people authorized to access the facilities, SCSU had access to the same facilities, and SCSU did not claim that the photographs or report were inaccurate or irrelevant.
Plaintiffs’ Motion Concerning Expert Testimony
The plaintiffs asked the court to limit testimony from SCSU’s expert, Timothy O’Brien, concerning athletic-financial-assistance allocation and athletic-participation opportunities. The court noted that O’Brien’s report was prepared for the athletic-financial-assistance claim, which was no longer at issue, and that SCSU had not timely submitted an expert report on athletic-participation opportunities. The court did not decide the motion at that time. Instead, it reserved judgment unless O’Brien’s testimony became an issue at trial, stating that it did not expect to receive his testimony.
Order
The court ordered the following:
- The defense motion to exclude photographs, testimony, and information from the plaintiffs’ inspections was DENIED.
- The defense motion to exclude historical evidence about SCSU’s accommodation of athletic interests and abilities was DENIED.
- The defense motion to exclude evidence related to the levels-of-competition test was DENIED.
- The defense motion to exclude testimony from Morris Kurtz and Sue Becker was DENIED.
- The court reserved judgment on the plaintiffs’ motion to limit Timothy O’Brien’s testimony.
The order decided which evidence the parties could seek to present at the upcoming trial; it did not decide the remaining Title IX claims.
Read the full 7-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.