What happens when 2 USC Gould Law professors divorce? The university gets sued
Professor Camille Gear Rich is suing the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, stating that the administration ignored her Title IX complaints that professor Stephen M. Rich, her ex-husband, was having an affair with a student. She also alleges the school later denied her disability accommodations in retaliation.
On Nov. 14, the university submitted a 44-page response to the complaint filed in June in the U.S. District for the Central District of California’s Western division. In its response, USC denied allegations of subjecting Camille Rich to a hostile work environment and maintained it had properly handled investigations related to her claims.
Stephen Rich, now vice dean of the law school, teaches courses in employment discrimination law, constitutional equality law and civil procedure, according to his university biography. Camille Rich teaches constitutional law, feminist legal theory, family law, children and the law and the First Amendment, according to her biography. Their divorce was finalized in 2019 after a four-year separation, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint includes three counts of gender discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and two counts of discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.
The suit claims Stephen Rich had been defaming his ex-wife to colleagues, and that Camille Rich had developed post-traumatic stress disorder from working in a hostile work environment. That condition spiked when she heard her ex-husband had an ongoing affair with a law student, who he later married and had twins with, the suit alleges.
Also, the suit claims the university improperly performed a “perfunctory and sham inquiry” into her complaints against her now ex-husband and inappropriately transferred her complaint out of what was then known as the Office of Equity and Diversity. Stephen Rich was not interviewed during the investigation, which was dismissed as “unfounded without further inquiry,” according to the suit.
Camille Rich alleges she was denied her leave to handle the PTSD, and that school officials did not restore lost pay for time spent dealing with her trauma and gave her poor performance reviews. She added that university officials—including former law school dean and current Provost Andrew Guzman—denied her request to cap her class size and contended that Guzman’s friendship with Stephen Rich made it impossible for Guzman to act neutrally.
“The lawsuit has no legal merit,” according to a university statement emailed to the ABA Journal. “We look forward to defending the university’s position in court.”
Stephen Rich and his new wife Deanna Rafla-Yuan are not parties to the lawsuit. “The complaint filed in federal court contains numerous untrue statements about me and about my relationship with my husband of over six years,” Rafla-Yuan wrote to the ABA Journal. “The truth is that my romantic relationship with Stephen began after I left USC Law School.”
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