Reverse discrimination has long been asserted by majority group members to resist the assertion of equal rights by less privileged groups. Recently, a new type of reverse discrimination claim has gained traction: sex discrimination lawsuits brought by men disciplined for sexual harassment. This claim first appeared in Title IX, with lawsuits brought by male students facing disciplinary action by colleges and universities for sexual harassment. Initially, courts easily dismissed these claims for lack of discriminatory intent against men. In the past decade, however, this claim—referred to here as reverse sexual harassment—has met with increasing success. More recently, reverse sexual harassment has begun to migrate into employment law in cases brought by male employees suing their employers for sex discrimination after facing discipline for sexual harassment. A perfect storm of factors made universities an attractive initial target for reverse sexual harassment claims, but the logic of the claim is not limited to the university setting.

This Article is the first to comprehensively examine reverse sexual harassment and the cultural and legal landscape in which it has taken root. Research for this Article identified 98 cases, producing 139 reported decisions, in which male plaintiffs alleged anti-male bias in their universities’ handling of sexual harassment allegations against them. In the past decade, these claims have gone from near sure losers to having a good chance at surviving a motion to dismiss and, to a lesser extent, summary judgment. The Article critically explores judges’ willingness to infer discriminatory intent in these cases. Title IX is not unique in its growing receptiveness to reverse sexual harassment claims. A smaller but notable set of cases by male employees have successfully alleged anti-male bias in their employers’ responses to accusations of sexual harassment. Although not yet a large run of cases, now that reverse sexual harassment litigation has become more successful under Title IX, and the perception of reverse discrimination generally has become ubiquitous, reverse sexual harassment claims are likely to spread further into employment discrimination law. A backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is bringing greater scrutiny to employer efforts to address discrimination and inequality in the workforce—a scrutiny likely to extend to employer efforts to mitigate sexual harassment.

This Article makes two major contributions to legal scholarship. First, it identifies and examines this newly ascendant species of reverse discrimination, putting it on the radar of legal scholars, practitioners, and advocates. Second, it lays the groundwork for contesting courts’ lenient approach to inferring anti-male bias from perceived unfairness in disciplinary proceedings and tougher enforcement of sexual harassment law. Reverse discrimination litigation, more so than challenges to procedural unfairness, has the potential to slow and even reverse enforcement of sexual harassment law and good faith efforts to comply with it. The Article calls for further efforts to deepen judicial understanding of sexual harassment’s grounding in antidiscrimination law to make it less susceptible to reflexive reversal. A fundamental part of this response must be to recognize that men, too, have a stake in eradicating sexual harassment. Restoring the law’s more skeptical stance on reverse sexual harassment claims requires breaking away from the men-versus-women, zero-sum perspective that fuels perceptions of reverse discrimination and undermines public support for sexual harassment law.