Sports Sexual Assault Lawsuits: Title IX, SafeSport, and Key Cases

Sports sexual assault lawsuits in the United States have produced some of the largest institutional abuse settlements on record, with universities, national governing bodies, and the federal government collectively paying out well over a billion dollars to athletes abused by team doctors, trainers, and coaches. The cases follow a recognizable pattern: abuse disguised as medical treatment or coaching, early warnings ignored, and years of litigation that often turns on two technical questions — whether the institution had “actual notice” under Title IX, and whether the claims were filed in time.

Larry Nassar: The Benchmark Case

The abuse committed by Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University team doctor, is the largest sports sexual abuse matter in American history. Nassar sexually abused more than 300 athletes over two decades, and the combined payouts now exceed $1 billion.

Michigan State settled with survivors for $500 million in 2018.¹ In December 2021, USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and their insurers agreed to a $380 million settlement, one of the largest ever in a sexual abuse case. The deal allowed USA Gymnastics to exit bankruptcy and required reforms including survivor-selected seats on its board.² In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice reached an additional $138.7 million settlement with survivors over the FBI’s mishandling of early investigations.³ FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a formal apology in 2021, and the bureau fired one agent involved in the botched investigation. Nassar is serving a prison sentence of up to 175 years.

University Team-Doctor and Trainer Cases

Nassar is the biggest example, but the pattern of a long-tenured team physician or athletic trainer abusing athletes while the university failed to respond has repeated at several major schools.

Ohio State: Richard Strauss

Ohio State University reached a $100 million settlement with nearly 300 survivors of sexual abuse by former team doctor Richard Strauss.⁴

USC: George Tyndall

The University of Southern California paid $215 million to settle claims from female patients of Dr. George Tyndall, with the settlement including provisions for systemic changes in reporting and investigation.⁵

San Jose State: Scott Shaw

Scott Shaw, SJSU’s director of sports medicine and head athletic trainer from 2008 to 2020, pleaded guilty in August 2023 to two federal counts of depriving individuals of their rights under color of law. He admitted to touching the breasts and buttocks of four female student-athletes without their consent or any legitimate medical purpose between 2017 and 2020.⁶ The guilty plea followed a nine-day trial that ended in mistrial; prosecutors dropped four additional counts under the plea.⁷ Shaw was sentenced in November 2023 to two years in federal prison and a $15,000 fine.

The institutional failures ran deep. In 2009, seventeen members of the women’s swimming and diving team reported Shaw to school officials, but SJSU’s human resources department and campus police cleared him.⁷ A Department of Justice investigation later concluded the university had violated Title IX for over a decade. In September 2021, SJSU settled with the DOJ, agreeing to pay $125,000 each to 13 of the 23 athletes identified as victims and to contact roughly 1,000 former female athletes to solicit reports of inappropriate touching.⁸ In total, San Jose State has paid over $7 million to 30 women who accused Shaw of sexual misconduct.

NC State: Robert Murphy

Thirty-one former male athletes at North Carolina State sued the university and its former director of sports medicine, Robert M. Murphy Jr., who held the role from 2012 to 2022. The complaint alleged improper genital touching during massages and intrusive observation during drug-testing urine collections.⁹ A 2022 Title IX investigation found Murphy’s conduct was “unwelcome and of a sexual nature,” “pervasive,” and “sufficiently severe,” and reports indicate concerns had been raised by coaching and athletic staff as early as 2014 to 2016.¹⁰ Murphy was suspended in January 2022, resigned that June, and had his professional license permanently revoked in 2023.¹¹ He has never been criminally charged, though the Wake County District Attorney confirmed in April 2026 that a criminal investigation is ongoing.¹² Murphy denies the allegations, with his attorney stating there is no “credible evidence that he assaulted anyone.”

On June 9, 2026, Wake County Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins dismissed the civil lawsuit. Claims against Murphy were thrown out because the judge ruled the statute of limitations had expired for allegations dating to 2013. Claims against university officials, including former athletic director Debbie Yow and current athletic director Boo Corrigan, were dismissed on jurisdictional grounds and directed to the North Carolina Industrial Commission.¹³ Plaintiffs’ attorneys plan to appeal and to file new claims on behalf of additional athletes.¹⁴ A parallel federal case is still alive: in January 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit revived one of three federal suits, directing the lower court to determine whether the university had “actual notice” of the harassment.¹⁵

Lawsuits Against Professional Athletes

A separate line of cases targets the athletes themselves, usually in civil court after criminal charges were declined or never brought.

Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson faced 27 civil lawsuits beginning in March 2021, alleging sexual misconduct during massage sessions while he played for the Houston Texans. Two Texas grand juries declined to pursue criminal charges. Watson settled with the majority of plaintiffs in 2022, and the final two remaining suits were dismissed with prejudice in February 2026, meaning they cannot be refiled. The NFL suspended Watson for 11 games in 2022 and fined him $5 million.¹⁶

Several other recent suits remain at earlier stages:

New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson was sued in May 2025 by an anonymous plaintiff alleging rape and years of abuse spanning 2018 to 2023, seeking between $18 million and $50 million. Williamson’s attorneys have “unequivocally” denied the allegations as “categorically false,” and said he plans to file a counterclaim alleging extortion.¹⁷
Pro Football Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe was sued in April 2025 by an anonymous plaintiff alleging assault and rape in Las Vegas in late 2024 and early 2025, seeking more than $50 million. Sharpe has categorically denied the allegations and called the lawsuit a “shakedown.”¹⁸
Former Lakers player and coach Byron Scott faces a lawsuit alleging sexual battery of a 15-year-old girl in 1987 during a team visit to a Los Angeles high school. The case was filed in 2022 under a California law allowing older claims involving underage plaintiffs, and an amended complaint naming Scott publicly was filed in May 2025. Scott’s attorney has stated he “doesn’t deny that sexual contact occurred but maintains that he thought the girl was of legal age.”¹⁹

Youth and Amateur Sports

Beyond gymnastics, abuse suits continue to emerge in other amateur sports. In June 2024, former competitive swimmer Amanda Le sued USA Swimming and others, alleging sexual abuse by Joseph Bernal, a former swim coach and Hall of Fame inductee, from roughly 2008 to 2014. USA Swimming permanently banned Bernal in 2016, and he died in October 2022. A separate suit by former swimmer Kimberly Stines alleges abuse by Bernal beginning in 1976.²⁰

In gymnastics, two former students of Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa, sued USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Center for SafeSport, and the gym’s operators in 2025. The suits allege that USA Gymnastics and SafeSport received reports about coach Sean Gardner’s “inappropriate and abusive behaviors” as early as December 2017 but failed to act, allowing Gardner to be hired at Chow’s gym in 2018. Gardner was arrested by the FBI in August 2025 on federal child pornography charges and is jailed pending a trial scheduled for July 2026.²¹

Why Institutional Cases Rise or Fall Under Title IX

Whether a school or sports organization can be held liable for abuse by one of its employees turns on a legal framework set by two Supreme Court cases.

In Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District (1998), the Court held that a school is liable for damages from teacher-on-student harassment only if an “appropriate school official” had actual knowledge of the misconduct and responded with “deliberate indifference,” meaning a response “clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances.”²² The following year, Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999) extended the same “actual notice” and “deliberate indifference” standards to student-on-student harassment, adding that the harassment must be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” that it effectively bars the victim’s access to education.²³

Critics argue these standards let schools shield themselves by avoiding knowledge of abuse, and that they are significantly more restrictive than workplace rules under Title VII, which can impose liability when an employer “knew or should have known.”²² The revived NC State federal case is a current test of the standard: the Fourth Circuit told the lower court to examine whether the university had “actual notice” of Murphy’s alleged harassment and whether the official notified had authority to address the complaint.¹⁵

Statutes of Limitations: The Other Decisive Barrier

When Title IX isn’t the issue, the filing deadline often is. The NC State state-court case was dismissed in part because claims dating to 2013 were deemed time-barred. North Carolina enacted a 2019 reform extending the deadline for child sexual abuse claims until the victim turns 28 and opening a two-year lookback window, but that window has closed.²⁴

More than 22 U.S. states, territories, and the federal government have now completely eliminated civil statutes of limitations for at least some of the most serious sex offenses. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that retroactive civil statutes of limitations are constitutional, and in June 2024 the Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed that a legislature may create a “revival window” for previously time-barred claims.²⁵ At the federal level, the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 extended the statute of limitations for certain federal civil claims to 10 years after a victim turns 18, and added a “reasonably discovered” provision allowing claims within 10 years of when the victim reasonably discovers the injury.²⁶

Research cited by RAINN found that more than half of child sexual abuse survivors first disclosed at age 50 or older, a timeline the extended statutes attempt to reflect.²⁵

SafeSport: The Current Oversight Mechanism and Its Limits

The U.S. Center for SafeSport was established in 2017 and empowered by the Safe Sport Act to investigate abuse complaints within the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement. Any adult authorized by an amateur sports organization to interact with a minor must report suspected child abuse to law enforcement within 24 hours or face potential federal criminal charges. The Center also maintains a centralized disciplinary database.²⁷

At congressional hearings in March 2024, preliminary analysis presented to the Senate Commerce Committee showed the Center had administratively closed roughly 80% of sexual misconduct cases in which it established jurisdiction, with nearly half of those closures attributed to a “reluctant claimant.” More than a quarter of its 940 open cases had been pending for over a year.²⁸ Some individuals under investigation continued to coach while cases remained open.²⁹

In December 2024, a bipartisan House bill called the Safer Sports for Athletes Act proposed $10 million in annual federal funding and would mandate that investigations be completed within 180 days, that investigators be assigned within seven business days of accepting jurisdiction, and that victims be provided a dedicated advocate.³⁰ SafeSport CEO Ju’Riese Colon told the Associated Press the bill imposes “cost-intensive mandates” without guaranteed funding.²⁹

1
BBC News. Nassar Abuse Payouts Exceed $1 Billion
2
PBS NewsHour. Why the $380 Million Settlement in Gymnast Sexual Abuse Suit Is Just a Start
3
WILX. Government Settlement Brings Total Nassar Payout Over $1 Billion
4
Reuters. Ohio State University Reaches $100 Million Settlement With Nearly 300 Sex Abuse Survivors
5
Sauder Schelkopf. Institutional Sexual Abuse Cover-Ups: Survivors Deserve Justice
6
U.S. Department of Justice. Former San Jose State University Director of Sports Medicine Sentenced for Groping Female Athletes
7
USA Today. Scott Shaw Ex-SJSU Trainer Pleads Guilty to Groping Female Athletes
8
Higher Ed Dive. San Jose State Settles for $1.6M With Athletes Sexually Abused by Former Trainer
9
Reading Eagle. NC State Abuse Lawsuit Dismissed
10
Athletic Business. Title IX Investigation Finds NC State Trainer Abused Student-Athletes During Treatment
11
Raleigh News & Observer. NC State Trainer License Revoked
12
WRAL. NC State Trainer Sex Abuse Case Wake County Court Hearing
13
Orlando Sentinel. NC State Abuse Lawsuit Dismissed
14
ABC News. Judge Dismisses Lawsuit by 31 Former NC State Athletes
15
NC Newsline. Appeals Court Revives Sexual Abuse Case Surrounding Former NC State Sports Medicine Director
16
ESPN. Two Assault Lawsuits vs. Browns’ Deshaun Watson Dismissed
17
ABC 6. Zion Williamson Sued Over Allegations of Rape, Years of Abuse
18
CNN. Shannon Sharpe Sued for Sexual Assault and Battery
19
ESPN. Lawsuit Accuses Byron Scott of Sexually Assaulting Teen in 1987
20
CNN. USA Swimming Coach Abuse Lawsuit
21
KCBD. USA Gymnastics, Olympic Sports Watchdog Failed to Stop Coach’s Sexual Abuse, Lawsuits Allege
22
National Women’s Law Center. Moving Beyond Gebser and Davis
23
Cornell Law Institute. Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education
24
Oregon State Legislature. Public Testimony Document on Statute of Limitations Reform
25
RAINN. Civil Statutes of Limitations for Sex Crimes: Reform Enables Justice
26
Child Victims. Victory in Congress: House Passes Major Civil Reform for Child Victims
27
U.S. Government Accountability Office. U.S. Center for SafeSport’s Handling of Allegations
28
U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce. Sen. Cruz: SafeSport Faces Serious Challenges in Carrying Out Its Mission
29
ESPN. U.S. Bill Would Boost SafeSport Funding, Seek Faster Investigations
30
Rep. Deborah Ross. U.S. Center for SafeSport Added Funding and Faster Decisions Proposed in Reform Bill