A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a former Western Kentucky University student who alleged that she was subject to racial discrimination and sexual harassment from a now-retired professor.

U.S. District Judge Court David Hale ruled that the statute of limitations had already run out on Jada Jefferson’s claims by the time she filed her lawsuit last year.

Jefferson, a Black student who graduated from WKU in 2019, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court that named as defendants the university, current WKU President Timothy Caboni and his predecessor, Gary Ransdell, former WKU theatre professor Scott Stroot, professor Michelle Dvoskin, former dean of Potter College of Arts and Letters David Lee, theatre and dance department head David Young and one-time WKU Title IX coordinator Andrea Anderson.

Jefferson’s complaint, which was filed in August 2020, alleged that Stroot made a number of racially insensitive remarks toward Jefferson and sexually harassed her in his classes.

Jefferson claimed WKU did not act on a Title IX complaint filed against Stroot on behalf of her and another student in 2017, that his misconduct continued after the complaint and that Dvoskin and Young failed to make a Title IX report after Jefferson disclosed incidents involving Stroot to them.

The lawsuit, filed by attorney Lindsay Cordes, claimed Jefferson attempted suicide at least twice while enrolled at the university and spent a week in a psychiatric hospital for treatment of depression.

A formal Title IX complaint was filed in spring 2019, shortly before Jefferson graduated, and Jefferson alleged Stroot retaliated against her by sharing information about the investigation with Jefferson’s classmates and other faculty.

According to court filings, Jefferson received an email in the fall of 2019 announcing Stroot’s retirement from WKU, and in November of that year, she was notified by Joshua Hayes of WKU’s Equal Employment Opportunity office that the university had “found over 15 years of abuse in relation to … Stroot.”

WKU had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, with attorney Ena Demir arguing that Jefferson’s claims were barred by Kentucky’s statute of limitations, which requires plaintiffs to bring a lawsuit within one year of the date of the alleged personal injury.

The dispute between the two sides centered on when the clock began running on the statute of limitations.

The university argued that the statute of limitations took effect in May 2019, when Jefferson graduated and a Title IX complaint had been filed. That would have put Jefferson’s lawsuit, filed in August 2020, beyond the statute of limitations.

“At or before her graduation in May 2019, (Jefferson) had all the necessary puzzle pieces at her disposal to form a picture of her federal causes of action,” Demir said in a motion to dismiss filed in November. “Her failure to assemble those pieces into a complaint until August 2020 means those claims are time-barred and must be dismissed.”

Jefferson, though, argued that the statue of limitations did not begin until November 2019, when Hayes notified her about WKU’s findings regarding Stroot.

In a response to the motion to dismiss, Cordes argued that it was not until that autumn that Jefferson became aware of the “magnitude of WKU’s unreasonable response” to her Title IX claims and of the extent of Stroot’s misconduct.

Hale’s ruling found that Jefferson had the information at hand to bring a lawsuit in May 2019, meaning that the statute of limitations began at that point.

“Jefferson had a ‘complete and present cause of action,’ as well as knowledge of her federal claims, by May 2019 at the latest. … The limitations period for her federal claims thus began to run no later than that date, and the claims are time-barred,” Hale said in his ruling.