Sex harassment dispute between MIT scientists reaches Massachusetts high court

BOSTON (CN) — Two of the country’s leading biological researchers argued about their own biological urges at the Massachusetts Supreme Court Monday, with the justices trying to mediate a “he said, she said” sexual harassment dispute stemming from an affair at MIT.

One-half of the ill-fated tryst was David Sabatini, then 50, a tenured MIT molecular biologist working at the prestigious Whitehead Institute on the role of proteins in tumor development. The other was Kristin Knouse, then 29 and a Whitehead fellow studying liver rejuvenation. The pair bonded over whiskey tastings and eventually had a sexual relationship.

Knouse later claimed Sabatini sexually harassed her, leading to his being fired in what he referred to as a “DEI-inspired purification of the institute.” Sabatini says the affair was consensual and that Knouse used the sexual harassment complaint to retaliate against him after he ended their relationship.

The affair led to a blizzard of legal claims and counterclaims, but at oral arguments, the high court focused on Knouse’s suit against Sabatini under state law prohibiting sexual harassment in educational institutions. Sabatini says the law authorizes suits only against institutions, not against individuals such as himself.

The problem is that the law on the topic is contained in a variety of statutes that were amended in different ways and refer back to each other in such a complex fashion that the justices sometimes got confused just trying to articulate their own questions.

Knouse’s lawyer, Ellen Zucker, tried to short-circuit the muddle by appealing to the justices on fairness grounds.

Sabatini is “a star professor, concededly and by his own description. He can move from place to place, as he has done. He can sue the alleged victim. He had sex with her when she was a student at MIT. He continued having sex with her when she was at the Whitehead fellows program … Do we give star professors a free pass? The answer, we submit, is no.”

But the justices were having none of it. “Are you suggesting there would be a legal difference depending on the stature of the professor?” asked an incredulous Justice Gabrielle Wolohojian.

Star professors “can silence young women,” Zucker said.

“That’s a policy issue,” said Justice Dalila Wendlandt dismissively, adding that Zucker should “take that next door” to the legislature.

Sabatini’s lawyer, Edward Foye of Arrowood LLP in Boston, took the opposite approach and delved into the technical intricacies of the statute, but he didn’t fare much better.

“There’s not a single provision … that imposes liability on an individual,” Foye argued. “It would have to be imposed by” a complex reading of several statutes at once.

“Why is that a problem?” Wendlandt asked.

After Foye provided a mind-numbing analysis of how the statutory provisions interacted, Wolohojian pointed to yet another provision and said, “I’m having trouble giving meaning to that sentence while also accepting your argument.”

Foye analogized the state statutes to Title IX, the federal law governing sex discrimination in education that doesn’t allow lawsuits to be brought against individuals.

“Is that expressly stated in Title IX?” Wendlandt asked.

“I believe it is,” Foye answered.

Wendlandt replied, “Then why wouldn’t the legislature expressly state it here?”

But Wendlandt was also worried that a ruling for Knouse would end up allowing students to sue each other over romantic disagreements, and Foye quickly picked up on that issue.

“If you open that box, all the genies come out,” he warned. “You necessarily have the prospect of students suing students, and teachers counterclaiming against students. What is the limiting principle here?”

“To be decided,” Wendlandt said, and with that, the argument ended.

Today, Knouse is an assistant professor at MIT and works at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Sabatini has his own lab with offices in Boston and Prague.