Boulder attorneys who represent victims of gender violence say they feel the recent string of male students suing under Title IX, the federal gender equity law, are distracting from decades of discrimination against women.

A number of schools, including the University of Colorado, are facing lawsuits from male students under Title IX, a law that has historically been used to protect the rights of women.

“John Doe,” who is described in court documents as a CU junior, claims he was discriminated against when he was wrongfully accused and suspended for three semesters after a night of consensual sex.

“CU-Boulder has created an environment where an accused male student is fundamentally denied due process by being prosecuted through the conduct process under a presumption of guilt,” according to the lawsuit. “Such a one-sided process deprived John Doe, as a male student, of educational opportunities at CU-Boulder on the basis of his sex.”

CU attorneys say his claims of sex discrimination are baseless.

As the White House, advocacy groups, students and parents pressure schools to address the issue of campus sexual assault, others are concerned that universities may be overcorrecting at the expense of male students.

Not so, say Title IX litigators John Clune and Baine Kerr. The two work at the long-standing Boulder firm Hutchinson Black and Cook and have represented sexual assault victims across the country in recent years.

“A lot of people in the last year say the pendulum has swung in the other direction, and that is completely the wrong imagery for this issue,” Clune said. “The pendulum has not swung, and there is no pendulum. We still have 100-to-1 women being discriminated against in these cases versus men. But we’re getting a little bit of media attention around the men’s cases. This concept that now universities are out to get men, and women are a protected class on campus, is just not accurate.”

Clune and Kerr said it’s definitely possible that some of the male students’ claims are valid and that they were discriminated against on the basis of sex. The two attorneys say they want to get to a place where all students, male and female, are treated the same.

But at the same time, the attorneys said they worry that these new lawsuits are drawing attention away from the more pervasive issue on college campuses and in society: discrimination against women.

“There can be meritorious claims,” Kerr said. “A charged student can be treated unfairly, not given a fair hearing and that can have huge consequences that can follow that student for the rest of his life. They’re not to be lightly dismissed, but it’s worrisome.”

Title IX, implemented in 1972, requires federally funded institutions to provide equal opportunities for men and women. Advocates say that historically schools haven’t done enough to protect women from sexual violence.

That’s still true at many colleges and universities, Clune said.

“We’re still having a tremendous number of schools that are not applying the code of the conduct the way they should be to the discrimination of women,” he said. “The male student lawsuits are getting a lot of attention because they’re somewhat novel, but I think the cases where men may actually have not been treated fairly in the process are probably still a drop in the bucket compared to where women are.”

Kerr said he worries that the recent, highly publicized lawsuits filed by male students will cause schools to relapse and become complacent about ridding their campuses of sex discrimination.

“Lawsuits like these are going to have an adverse effect on women’s safety, and that’s a big worry,” Kerr said. “If schools start getting defensive about liability to accused students, they’re going to find ways — they’ve already found every way possible not to prosecute them under their codes of conduct. They could fall back into those bad habits very easily.”

Sarah Kuta: 303-473-1106, kutas@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/sarahkuta