The ruling hinged on a UK address and immunity - not on whether bias happened
A US professor living in Britain says a university passed him over because he's a man. A federal appeals court sided with the school.
Back in 2017, the University of Cincinnati's biology department opened a search for an assistant professor in cell biology. A US citizen based in the United Kingdom applied. A faculty search committee interviewed him, ranked the finalists, and by a three-to-one vote made him its top choice, according to the court.
Then the process stalled. Some faculty flagged a possible conflict of interest, since the committee's chair had coauthored papers with him and once sat on his doctoral committee. Others questioned his candidacy on gender and diversity grounds. In the court's account of the record, one faculty member said he "would not provide [a] much-needed increase in diversity," and another said he "brings the opposite of diversity."
The record also shows the department head asked the dean whether the university could hire a man over two well-qualified women, and the dean said it could. Administrators then moved to "focus on the women candidates first," the court noted, with "gender balance of the department" cited as a factor. The dean then cancelled the search altogether. The job was never reposted.
At a faculty meeting, the dean defended the cancellation partly on litigation risk. According to the record, he warned that a passed-over candidate could sue and pointed to past payouts, saying the university had "settled one for about" $250,000 and, months earlier, $120,000.
The applicant sued, bringing a Title IX claim against the university and equal-protection claims against the dean and department head. He asked a court to install him in the job and award damages.
On August 5, 2026, the appeals court affirmed the judgment for the university and the two administrators. It did not decide whether bias tainted the search. Instead, the Title IX claim failed because the statute protects only people physically in the United States, and he was in Britain the whole time - a question the court said it had never faced before. His constitutional claims were blocked by sovereign immunity and by qualified immunity, which shields officials unless they violate a clearly established right.
For HR leaders, the ruling is a reminder that internal emails, meeting notes, and offhand remarks about gender or diversity can become the evidentiary record in a hiring dispute. It also shows how public employers lean on immunity defenses, and it signals that Title IX may not reach applicants located abroad.
