From D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman's decision two weeks ago in Doe v. President & Fellows of Middlebury College:
Plaintiff brought this lawsuit against numerous defendants [including American University, George Washington University, and Middlebury College -EV] alleging inter alia employment discrimination, harassment, forced labor, trafficking in labor or commercial sex acts, and bias-related crime. Plaintiff contends that she has been working in the "accelerationism" subfield of terrorism studies since 2015, and that from 2018 to 2021 she "was driving a series of ground-breaking advancements" in the field when the Defendants coerced her to provide her labor and services to them against her will.
According to Plaintiff, the "intellectual core" of Middlebury College's Accelerationism Research Consortium ("ARC") is "derived exclusively from the [P]laintiff's labor," yet she was excluded from the venture because of her disabilities. Plaintiff asserts that Defendants carried out a campaign of harassment and emotional abuse that denied her credibility, equal treatment, benefits, and opportunities. She further states that Defendants' actions have driven her out of her field of study such that she "will never be able to return to the workplace or higher education because of injuries resulting from the [D]efendants' actions." [UPDATE: Here's the original pro se Complaint, for those curious about the factual allegations. -EV]
Plaintiff alleges Counts I-IV pursuant to the District of Columbia Human Rights Act. She alleges that (i) Defendants "maintain[ed] a discriminatory employment scheme, plan, or pattern that systematically and intentionally result[ed] in the disparate treatment of the [P]laintiff … because of or arising from her protected medical condition"; (ii) Defendants engaged in "unlawful harassment or fostered a hostile work environment for the [P]laintiff on the basis of disability discrimination"; (iii) Defendants retaliated against her for protected activity that included "[P]laintiff's public or private opposition to the [D]efendants' patterns or practices of discrimination and harassment on the basis of disability," and later filing of a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"); and (iv) Defendants aided and abetted acts of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation by furthering and seeking to make the discrimination and harassment of other Defendants succeed.
Plaintiff brings Counts V-VIII pursuant to the Prohibition Against Human Trafficking Amendment Act. These counts allege that (v) Defendants "knowingly used prohibited means to cause the [P]laintiff to provide labor or services" by "manipulat[ing] her pre-existing belief that her failure to work would result in serious physical harm to members of the public"; (vi) Defendants "enter[ed] into an agreement, explicitly or tacitly, intended to deprive the [P]laintiff of her skilled labor and contractual autonomy," and some Defendants used means of coercion to secure Plaintiff's labor while others "recruited, enticed, provided, obtained, or maintained the [P]laintiff's provision of labor or services knowing that it was caused by means of coercion"; (vii) Defendants "knowingly benefitted financially from the trafficking offenses" because the Defendants all had at least constructive knowledge of, and participated in, a venture that allowed some Defendants to use Plaintiff's work as the labor basis for the ARC; and (viii) Defendants engaged in labor exploitation based on Plaintiff's actual or perceived disabilities evidenced by the alleged statements from some Defendants that Plaintiff's disabilities were their motivation for the acts described in the Amended Complaint and via the doctrine of respondeat superior for other Defendants….
