Colorado Law School Says It Didn’t Inform Neil Gorsuch Of A Complaint From A Women Student

It must be nice to have a sitting federal judge on your faculty.

Neil Gorsuch, currently sailing through his confirmation hearing, is taking a little heat over some comments he allegedly made while teaching at the University of Colorado Law School. Apparently, he was giving a hypothetical where a woman misused her maternity benefits and left the company right after having a baby. According to the complaining student, Jennifer Sisk, Gorsuch said “many” women improperly use their maternity benefits before leaving the company.

That’s… a pretty obnoxious thing to say. Even more obnoxious to believe. Even more obnoxious to present to impressionable students without any facts or statistical evidence to back it up. (Note: many other students dispute Sisk’s version of events.)

Sisk complained to the university about the comments. Which… I mean, okay. Michael Sandel once asked me, if I was so liberal, why couldn’t the government have a “taking” of my mother’s kidney and give it to someone who needs it? Law hypotheticals can get rough.

But the student complained, and a good law school should have a process for dealing with complaints.

At Colorado Law, the process, if it existed, failed. Here’s how Colorado Law Dean James Anaya explained it to KDVR:

“In late April and May 2016, law school administrators met with the student to address her concerns and told her the matter would be raised with Judge Gorsuch after grades were submitted for the spring semester,” Dean S. James Anaya said in a statement.

“At the end of June, the law school had a transition of deans and, regrettably, preceding that change, no member of the law school administration spoke to Judge Gorsuch about the student’s concern. We apologize to the student who expressed the concern and to Judge Gorsuch for not bringing this matter to his attention last summer.”

That’s simply not good enough. A student had a serious complaint, and there’s got to be a process behind elevating that complaint.

Again, I don’t think what Gorsuch supposedly said, while gross, is anything that should prevent him from teaching a class (or serving on the Court, if we’re going there). But the student deserved an explanation. Gorsuch deserved a chance to clarify himself. Right now, I’ll be far more interested in what Gorsuch said about those comments after the complaint was brought to him, rather than the fleeting classroom comment itself.

“You know, that was a bad way to explore a hypothetical, I apologize.” — that would be one answer.
“Suck it up, toots, that’s just locker-room talk.” — that would be a different kind of answer.

These complaints are a problem for Colorado, much more so than Gorsuch. Colorado Law students deserve to know that they can lodge a complaint, and have that complaint be heard, regardless of the stature of the professor they’re complaining about.

This time, it’s a (to my mind) silly comment made while trying to get people to dig into a hypo. But next time, a student might have a much more serious concern. One hopes that such concerns get answered before the professor gets nominated to the Supreme Court.

CU Law School says it didn’t inform Gorsuch of maternity leave complaint [KDVR]
Fellow Students Refute Student’s Claim of Sexist Gorsuch Comments [Bench Memos / National Review]

Earlier: Does Judge Gorsuch Have Backwards Thoughts On Working Women And Pregnancy?

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Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.