Challenging the Title IX Determination: Where the Record Fails Under the Recodified 2020 Rule

Sean H. Sobel, Founding Attorney | Sobel Law Solutions, LLC

Sean H. Sobel is the Founding Attorney of Sobel Law Solutions, LLC, a Cleveland, Ohio firm he launched in March 2026 after more than fifteen years practicing employment and civil rights law at a large national firm and a Cleveland boutique practice. He maintains a national Title IX practice that spans every seat at the table — serving as advisor to complainants and respondents at colleges, universities, and K-12 institutions across multiple states, conducting independent Title IX investigations and hearing-officer engagements for educational institutions, and litigating Title IX private-right-of-action and Section 1983 claims in federal court. Alongside his campus work, Sean represents Ohio employees in discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, FMLA, wrongful termination, severance, and non-compete matters before administrative agencies, Ohio common pleas courts, and the federal district courts. Recognized by Super Lawyers for fourteen consecutive years, his Title IX work has drawn national press coverage, and he brings to this program a practitioner’s view of how the 2020 regulations actually play out in live hearings, crossexamination, and investigations.

• Education & Credentials

Sean earned his J.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in 2010 and his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2007. During law school he served as a judicial extern to the Honorable Peter C. Economus of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio and as a legal intern in the Office of Federal Operations at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — the office that adjudicates federal-sector discrimination appeals. He is admitted to practice in Ohio, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and in the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of Ohio and has been a member of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association since 2010.

• Recognition & Leadership

Sean has been recognized by Super Lawyers for fourteen consecutive years, including selection to the Ohio Rising Stars list every year from 2014 through 2025 and to the full Ohio Super Lawyers list for 2026 and 2027 — a distinction reserved for no more than five percent of attorneys in the state. He holds a 10.0 “Superb” rating from Avvo, has been named one of the Three Best Rated® Top 3 Employment Lawyers in Cleveland, and received the American Institute of Legal Counsel’s Client Satisfaction Award in 2016. His Title IX representation of students and employees has generated national press coverage, and he is a published contributor to the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Journal, most recently co-authoring “When Severance Agreements Bar ERISA Long-Term Disability Claims” (Jan./Feb. 2026). He is a frequent speaker at accredited seminars, bar programs, and community legal town halls.

• Professional Involvement

Sean’s Title IX practice is deliberately built on both sides of the process. He serves as an advisor to complainants and respondents in campus proceedings nationwide — preparing students, faculty, and staff for interviews, drafting written submissions and responses to investigative reports, and conducting the live cross-examination the 2020 regulations require at hearings — and he is separately retained by colleges and universities to conduct independent Title IX investigations and serve as a hearing officer. That dual vantage point gives him an unusually clear read on how decision-makers weigh evidence, where advisors win and lose credibility, and how institutional process choices create or foreclose appellate and litigation issues. Beyond the campus, Sean has been a long-standing advocate for equal access to the legal system, authoring “More Should Be Done to Ensure Deaf Individuals Have Equal Access to the Law” for the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Journal and presenting on deaf discrimination and barriers to effective communication, reasonable accommodations at work and school, and employee rights at programs for bar associations, the NAACP, and community audiences.

• Experience

Sean has practiced employment and civil rights law since 2010. He began his career as an associate at Javitch, Block & Rathbone and then served as a staff attorney at BakerHostetler, one of the nation’s largest law firms, where he handled e-discovery and litigation matters and wrote on spoliation and social-media evidence for the firm’s E-Discovery Newsletter. He then moved to the employee side of the bar as an associate at The Spitz Law Firm before spending nearly a decade (2017–2026) as a Partner at Sobel, Wade & Mapley, LLC, a Cleveland employment-law boutique, where he built and led the firm’s national Title IX practice. In March 2026 he founded Sobel Law Solutions, LLC so that students, employees, and institutions facing Title IX and workplace matters could work directly with an experienced attorney from first call through hearing. Over the past five years he has handled roughly 75 Title IX matters as advisor, investigator, hearing officer, and federal litigator — experience that makes him uniquely positioned to walk non-specialist practitioners through notice, the grievance process, live hearings and crossexamination, and the appeal and litigation pathways under the 2020 Rules.

SESSION 1 – The recodified text as the yardstick | Sean H. Sobel | 2:30pm – 2:40pm

This session sets the measure that every later argument in the program is tested against. What the 2020 procedures require again as of September 29, 2026, the four revisions, and the carried-forward file problem for matters opened under the vacated 2024 rule. Institution-side attorneys will see where an open file departs from the governing text, and party-side attorneys will see which requirements frame a challenge.

SESSION 2 – Reading the determination for reversible error | Sean H. Sobel | 2:40pm – 3:00pm

This session takes a single determination apart the way a student’s or employee’s lawyer reads it, looking for reversible error. The three places determinations fail most often: notice and evidence access, credibility findings without a stated rationale, and exclusion of relevant evidence without written reasons. Doe v. University of North Carolina System, 133 F.4th 305 (4th Cir. 2025). Institution-side attorneys will see where a written determination carries exposure, and party-side attorneys will see which of the three failure points to press.

SESSION 3 – The hearing record | Sean H. Sobel | 3:00pm – 3:20pm

This session moves from the written determination to the hearing that produced it and to what that record must show when the matter is reviewed. Cross-examination in postsecondary cases and written questions in K-12, what an advisor should put on the record, and preserving objections for the appeal. Doe v. Baum, 903 F.3d 575 (6th Cir. 2018), and the Sixth Circuit line. Both sides will see how the advisor’s choices at the hearing shape the internal appeal and the federal court review addressed in the sessions that follow.

SESSION 4 – The internal appeal | Sean H. Sobel | 3:20pm – 3:30pm

This session covers the stage between the determination and any lawsuit. Using the mandatory appeal grounds (procedural irregularity, new evidence, conflict of interest or bias) and building the record a court will later read. It connects the hearing record to the federal claims that follow and shows both sides how a court will later read the appeal decision.

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm

SESSION 5 – Federal court after the determination | Sean H. Sobel | 3:40pm – 4:00pm

This session follows the matter into federal court once the institution’s process is complete. Erroneous outcome and selective enforcement under Title IX, due process at public institutions, breach of contract at private ones, and the sovereign and qualified immunity lessons from Doe v. UNC System. It ties the record built at the hearing and on internal appeal to the claims available against public and private institutions and to the immunity defenses those claims meet.

SESSION 6 – The employee respondent | Sean H. Sobel | 4:00pm – 4:15pm

This session turns from students to faculty and staff, where one Title IX matter can bring several frameworks into play. Faculty and staff cases where Title IX, the collective bargaining agreement, publicemployee due process, and Title VII all apply at once. Attorneys on both sides will see how these overlapping obligations bear on the determination, the appeal, and the claims that may follow.

SESSION 7 – OCR from the party side | Sean H. Sobel | 4:15pm – 4:30pm

This closing session looks at OCR as an option for the student or employee challenging a determination. When a complaint to OCR helps a student or employee and when it does not, given current staffing and the staff-on-student enforcement focus. Institution-side attorneys will see how that enforcement focus bears on their own exposure.