UPDATED: Oct. 2, 2017 at 10:46 p.m.

A former Syracuse University student has filed a complaint against the university claiming he was unfairly expelled for sexual assault.

The lawsuit, which was filed in July, was first reported by Syracuse.com on Sept. 25. SU responded to the lawsuit on Sept. 26 asking the judge to dismiss the case.

Neither the plaintiff nor the woman who accused him of sexual assault are named in the lawsuit. They are only referred to as “John Doe” and “Jane Roe.” The account contained in the lawsuit is only from Doe, who maintains his innocence.

Doe claims in the lawsuit that SU committed “impermissible gender bias” against him during the investigation into the incident, and proceedings that found him guilty were “flawed and biased.”

In response to the lawsuit, Sarah Scalese, associate vice president for university communications at SU, said in a statement: “The University’s process to adjudicate sexual assault allegations is fully guided by federal and state law. Per University policy, and to ensure due process, we don’t comment on the specifics of any pending litigation.”

According to the complaint, John Doe and Jane Roe exchanged texts and made plans to meet at a fraternity party on the night of Sept. 13, 2016. They started kissing and eventually left the party together. Both were drinking alcohol, and one witness said they were both intoxicated, “but not to the degree of being unable to stand or speak; they weren’t stumbling.”

In Doe’s room, the pair had “rough” but consensual sex twice, Doe claims in the lawsuit. Roe told investigators she did not remember much of what happened but said she awoke the next morning with a swollen lip and bruises on her chest. Roe sought medical attention for the bruises on her chest 34 hours after the incident.

A line in the lawsuit notes that bruises were not present in Instagram photos posted by Roe after the incident.

When asked if it would have been possible for the bruises to be covered with makeup or photo editing, Joshua Engel, the lawyer representing Doe, said the goal of the lawsuit is to not re-litigate the incident itself, but to point out that Doe did not have a fair hearing process to “ask those tough questions.”

Roe filed a complaint with the university, initially reporting the encounter as intimate partner violence and not sexual assault, according to the lawsuit. Roe did not press criminal charges against Doe.

At a hearing regarding the incident, Doe got to tell his side of the story, but claims in the lawsuit he did not get to question witnesses, including Roe.

After a months-long investigation, Doe was told on Jan. 26, 2017 that he was found guilty of violating SU’s Code of Conduct. The University Conduct Board recommended he be expelled from SU.

Doe appealed the decision, which was subsequently denied.

The lawsuit claims Doe’s expulsion from SU has caused Doe to be “denied the benefits of education at his chosen school, damaged his academic and professional reputations and may affect his ability to enroll at other institutions of higher education and to pursue a career.”

New York is one of two states that require schools to disclose on transcripts when a student has been expelled for sexual assault.

“This will follow him his entire life,” Engel said, “which is only more of a reason that we make sure we get this right.”

Doe’s complaint reflects a growing concern, especially among men’s rights groups, that university sexual assault proceedings unfairly railroad the accused.

Those concerns were validated when Betsy DeVos, the President Donald Trump-appointed secretary of education, last week reversed Obama-era guidelines on how schools handle sexual assault. DeVos scrapped the requirement that mandated universities use a lower standard of proof, a “preponderance of the evidence.”

Now, universities can use a higher standard, “clear and convincing evidence.”

Before these sweeping changes were announced, Engel advised the United States Department of Education in August on how to revise the Obama administration’s rules, according to a post on his law firm’s website. His firm, Engel & Martin LLC, hailed DeVos in a tweet after the announcement.

“Important changes are coming in #TitleIX. We urge increased due process protections for BOTH accused and complainants/survivors,” the tweet read.

“At the end of the day, victims should want a process that is reliable and that everyone accepts as legitimate and fair,” Engel said. “The people who should be banging the drum loudest on behalf of John Doe in this case is the, I think, the victim community because they’re the ones with the biggest interest in having a process that gets it right.”

The lawsuit claims SU administrators and investigators were biased against Doe because he is a man. Engel points to the fact that only Doe was disciplined even though both parties were too intoxicated to consent as a key component of his argument for gender discrimination.

The lawsuit emphasizes SU’s history with protests following the closure of the Advocacy Center in 2014 and an open federal investigation into how the university handles sexual assault as evidence that SU administrators were under pressure to protect themselves from accusations that they had failed to protect female students.

Engel said it wasn’t a coincidence that this case was being adjudicated at the same time representatives from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights were on campus as part of the open federal investigation into SU.

Said Engel: “I don’t have a smoking gun and I don’t expect to find one, but we’ve got a big coincidence in timing.”

This post has been updated with additional reporting.