Two former William Paterson University students who were charged with sexual assault and expelled even though the charges were dropped have sued the school.
Garrett Collick and Noah Williams filed the lawsuit Tuesday. Williams' mother also joined in the lawsuit.
They charge the school with discrimination and state and federal civil rights violations.
Collick and Williams were among five students charged with sexually assaulting a female student last November. A Passaic County grand jury declined to indict them in January.
The lawsuit claims the university punished the students without conducting an investigation, instead relying solely on the word of the accuser. It contends the university's sexual conduct polices discriminate against male students accused of assault.
A university spokeswoman didn't immediately return an email seeking comment Tuesday.
Collick told NBC 4 New York last January, after the charges were dropped, "I didn't commit a crime and I'm not a bad person. That's what I want people to know."
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An attorney for Collick, Laura Sutnick, said of the accused students, "They were starting college and they want to be educated and they wanted to be successful in life, and all of a sudden their whole life was totally derailed."
"Once somebody accuses you of a crime, how do you recover from that?" she said.
