THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 23, 1996 TAG: 9603230288
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: ROANOKE LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
An individual rights group and a national women's group are taking opposite sides in a Virginia Tech rape case based on a federal act that lets victims of sex-based crimes recover damages in federal court.
The Center for Individual Rights co-authored arguments made Friday on behalf of Tony Morrison, a football player accused of raping a woman in his dorm room.
The National Organization for Women sided with Christy Brzonkala, who is seeking $10 million from Morrison for the alleged rape and is advocating changes in campus sexual assault policies.
Morrison and Virginia Tech have asked U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser to dismiss the lawsuit without a trial. Friday was the deadline for filing related arguments.
The Violence Against Women Act, which Morrison claims to be unconstitutional, provides that violent crimes motivated by the victim's sex are discriminatory and violate her civil rights under federal law.
Morrison claims Congress exceeded its power by passing the law. The act does not substantially affect interstate commerce and therefore is a state, not a federal, matter, his attorneys wrote.
But Julie Goldscheid of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund argued that many individuals who commit gender-motivated violent acts cross state lines. In addition, she wrote, many women cross state lines to escape gender-motivated violence.
``Congress found that the states have failed to provide equal protection of the laws to victims of gender-motivated violence, who are usually women,'' she argued.
The law was enacted a few days before the September 1994 encounter between Brzonkala and Morrison, who said the sexual intercourse was consensual.
Brzonkala, who wants her name made public, is the first woman to file a civil case using the act. A Connecticut woman who claims she was battered by her husband for years subsequently filed a lawsuit using the act, Goldscheid said. Other women have filed criminal charges based on the federal law.
Federal civil rights laws previously applied only to sex discrimination in the workplace and racially motivated acts of violence, Goldscheid said.
Many allegations of sexual assault at Virginia Tech and at most other colleges are routinely handled by school disciplinary panels and not reported to local police.
Brzonkala claims that during two campus hearings last summer Virginia Tech gave preferential treatment to Morrison, who was suspended and then allowed to return.
Her attorney, Eileen Wagner, argued that Morrison has expressed misogynist sentiments and conspired with others to attack Brzonkala. The alleged rape ``was a carefully orchestrated initiation rite with striking similarities to documented attacks against first-year college women by athletic team members at schools across the country over the last five years,'' she wrote.
Morrison's attorney, David Paxton, denied those allegations and said they are unsubstantiated.
Paxton argued that the Violence Against Women Act ``is not intended to create a federal tort claim for every alleged sexual assault or rape against women.''
Brzonkala failed to show that she was a victim of a crime of violence motivated by sex rather than a random act of violence, Paxton wrote.
Paxton and Michael Rosman of the Center for Individual Rights, a Washington, D.C., organization specializing in civil rights and First Amendment cases, also argued that the act itself is unconstitutional. by CNB