Claims arising from a college’s Title IX investigation; Sua sponte dismissal of a 42 USC § 1983 due process claim on the merits; Tingler v Marshall; Sufficiency of notice & opportunity to respond; State actor; Brentwood Acad v Tennessee Secondary Sch Athletic Ass’n; “Close nexus”; Ripeness of Title IX violation claims; Theory of “erroneous outcome”; Selective enforcement claim

The court held that while the district court did not follow the appropriate process for an on-the-merits, sua sponte dismissal of plaintiff-Doe’s federal due process claim, defendants (collectively, Oberlin) “is not a state actor subject to federal due process requirements.” Thus, dismissal on the merits was proper, and affirmed. As to his remaining claims, including Title IX claims, “the district court was correct to dismiss them for lack of ripeness, but subsequent factual developments” had ripened them on appeal. Thus, the court remanded as to those claims. Doe sued Oberlin, a private college, in “state court during the Title IX office’s ongoing investigation into a fellow student’s sexual misconduct accusation against him.” He alleged, among other things, “that the investigation violated federal due process and Title IX. After removal to federal court, the district court sua sponte dismissed the federal due process claim with prejudice and dismissed the remaining claims without prejudice.” The court found that two issues arose with the sua sponte dismissal of his § 1983 due process claim. The first was whether the district court gave him “adequate notice that it was planning to dismiss the federal due process claim on the merits.” The court noted that “the district court stated a plan to dismiss the entire case without prejudice belies Oberlin’s argument that Doe had notice of [its] intention to sua sponte dismiss the federal due process claim on the merits and with prejudice.” Second, the district court failed to “give Doe a sufficient opportunity either to respond to the notice of dismissal or to amend his complaint.” Because the court requires “the district court to give a plaintiff notice of the specific grounds for a planned sua sponte dismissal on the merits, this record indicates that Doe’s opportunity to amend or respond after the initial notice was insufficient.” Further, the court concluded “the limited time between the district court’s notice of intent to dismiss the case sua sponte and the actual dismissal supports Doe’s assertion that he was denied the proper procedural safeguards.” The court held that without “an explicit opportunity to respond or to amend the complaint based on the known intention of the district court, Tingler was not satisfied.” However, the fact that the “sua sponte dismissal amounted to a Tingler error” did not necessitate a remand here. The court held that Doe’s allegations neither satisfied “any of the state-actor tests nor overcome the persuasive case law from our sister circuits.” Thus, allowing him “to make additional amendments to his complaint to respond further to Oberlin’s state-actor argument would be futile.”