BREAKING: McAuliffe-Linked Law Firm, NSBA Fighting Student Who Said She Was Gang-Raped, Asks Supreme Court To Alter Title IX To Diminish Victims Rights

A law firm that employed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has made a cottage industry out of aggressively fighting victims of alleged sexual abuse in schools, being paid huge sums by school administrators whom the girls say ignored their accusations.

In one case, the Hunton Andrews Kurth law firm, where McAuliffe served as a senior adviser from 2019 until recently, is battling a young woman who says that she was repeatedly raped on her Fairfax County middle school campus as a 12-year old and that she was slashed with a knife, burned with a lighter, and anally penetrated. 

The law firm and McAuliffe’s campaign refused to comment on whether the law firm still employs McAuliffe by the deadline but McAuliffe reported income apparently linked to the firm in 2021, after announcing his run for governor of Virginia on December 8, 2020. Later advertisements from the firm for McAuliffe fundraisers refer to McAuliffe as a “former colleague.”

The girl said she was afraid of having her real name attached to the case because one of her alleged tormentors had threatened to kill her if she came forward. The McAuliffe-linked law firm is seeking to have the case thrown out because it was filed under a pseudonym, even though there is no dispute that the school system knows who she is. A judge rejected Hunton’s argument, but the firm would not relent, filing an appeal on behalf of its client, the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS).

In a separate case, a girl alleged that after FCPS administrators were told of an unwanted sexual incident on a band trip, a school security officer told her there was no point in seeking criminal charges, and the school gave an award to her alleged abuser. Hunton told the court that the school system lost documentation showing its investigation of the allegations – in part because it was not using a sexual harassment allegation database that it had promised to use pursuant to a federal settlement in the other girl’s case. In both cases, a women’s rights group filed “amicus” briefs to express opposition to Hunton’s arguments.

Joining McAuliffe’s former law firm and FCPS in the latter case was the National School Boards Association, which filed its own amicus brief. The trio is banking on an aggressive and novel interpretation of Title IX, a law that provides protections in sexual assault cases, that would be more favorable to school administrators and less favorable

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