TROY — A state Supreme Court justice has blocked Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from notifying another college that one of that school's students was found guilty in a campus proceeding of sexual assault, ruling this would overstep RPI's jurisdiction and violate the man's constitutional rights.

The dispute stems from a complaint made in the summer of 2016 by an RPI student who said she was raped and abused off campus by her former partner, who was a graduate student at another institution.

According to Justice Raymond Elliott III, RPI was right to investigate the alleged assault and provide certain remedies to the woman who made the accusation. However, RPI erred when it interviewed the "unaffiliated student" from the other school and used that interview to make a finding of guilt, the judge wrote in a Nov. 6 decision.

RPI further erred, Elliott ruled, when it informed the student, identified in court papers as John Doe, that it would be notifying his school of the assault.

RPI declined to comment Monday.

"Throughout my research, I could not find a single Title IX case involving an unaffiliated student," said Brett French, an attorney with the Albany firm of Cooper Erving & Savage, who represented John Doe and filed an Article 78 proceeding. "That's why I feel this was a sweeping decision."

The decision highlights a little-known area of the federal Title IX law, which prohibits gender discrimination at schools that receive federal funding and governs how colleges and universities respond to allegations of sexual assault.

In many cases, an assault is committed by someone affiliated with the campus — either a student or a member of the faculty or staff. But in some cases, an assault is committed by an "unaffiliated" perpetrator — an outsider who is neither enrolled or employed at the school.

In either circumstance, the school is required to investigate the allegation, regardless of any separate police investigation that might be underway, and make a finding based on the evidence. If an assault is believed to have occurred, the school must take "prompt and effective" steps to prevent its recurrence, eliminate any hostile environment the victim might face and, if appropriate, remedy its effects.

Schools often accomplish this by suspending the perpetrator until the victim has finished school, or expelling them outright. In New York, schools are by law also required to mark the perpetrator's transcript so that if they withdraw and transfer, the receiving school is aware of prior misconduct.

The options for remedy are far fewer when the perpetrator is not affiliated with the campus. In RPI's case, the school informed the victim she could file a complaint with John Doe's school or with local law enforcement. RPI also issued John Doe a "persona non grata" letter informing him he was not welcome on campus.

Beyond that, Elliott wrote, RPI lacked jurisdiction for much else.

"(RPI) had no jurisdictional basis in which to subject (John Doe) to the interview, and they should have never taken his statement," Elliott wrote.

As a result, he ordered the finding against John Doe overturned. In addition, the judge wrote, the school has no jurisdiction to "report, inform, publish or share" any information or documentation regarding the alleged incident to John Doe's school. The incident was never revealed to the man's school after his lawyer obtained a temporary restraining pending the judge's decision.

The only instances, provided in law, in which a school can notify another school of misconduct by one of their students is if that misconduct occurred on campus or in the "context of an education program or activity" between the two schools, like a sporting event or academic competition.

Even if John Doe had been a student, the procedure RPI followed would have violated his constitutional rights, Elliott wrote.

Under the federal law, accused individuals must be informed of the accusations against them and provided sufficient opportunity to review the evidence. John Doe, he wrote, was not afforded that opportunity until moments prior to his meeting with RPI.

In addition, the judge wrote, "there existed a language and a possible cultural barrier that resulted in miscommunication and misunderstanding" during the student's interview process.

Title IX judicial proceedings, and the Obama-era guidelines that govern them, have been the subject of national debate over the past year.

After initially stating that these proceedings often violated the rights of the accused, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos subsequently in October rescinded the guidelines to the dismay of sexual-assault victims and advocates who say they had finally forced colleges to take sexual assault seriously.

The guidelines had many critics, though, who argued the standard of evidence that colleges used to determine guilt was too low. In John Doe's case, RPI used the preponderance standard, which is used in most civil cases and means an assault was "more likely than not" to have happened. Conviction in criminal cases requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

"We completely understand an academic institution's duty to comply with Title IX, but in this matter, justice was done, and a line in the sand has been drawn," said French, John Doe's Albany attorney. "The court has spoken, and actions taken by universities without jurisdiction and in excess of their sexual misconduct policies and Title IX will not be tolerated."