Doe v. Hagenbeck

The plaintiff is a female former cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where she claimed that she was forced to resign after her third year due to rampant sexual hostility. In May 2010, she was raped while at West Point after she took sleeping pills and she also cites several other instances of sexual assault and harassment, claiming that members the Sexual Assault Review Board at West Point failed to punish the perpetrators. The District Court found that the plaintiff had properly stated an equal protection claim under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, affording women the same protections under the law as men. The District Court also found that hearing the claim was not precluded by Feres Doctrine, which typically bars tort claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act and constitutional claims against superior officers incident to military service, since the rape was not a service-related injury and hearing the claim would not compromise the legislative or executive functions of government, including the disciplinary role of the Executive Branch over the nation's military. Therefore, the court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss.