High-ranking USC professor had affair with student, lawsuit says

A USC law professor accused her ex-husband, who also teaches at the school, of having an affair with a student who he later had children with.

The claim surfaced in a June lawsuit by professor Camille Rich, who says USC mishandled her Title IX complaints about the affair in 2019. Stephen Rich, the ex-husband, was named a vice dean at the Gould School of Law in January.

USC prohibits faculty from engaging in intimate relationships with undergraduates. Professors are similarly barred from relationships with graduate students who they teach or evaluate, though if there’s no supervisory role, the relationship is only “strongly discouraged.”

Camille’s lawsuit does not say what program the student was enrolled in. But online records show the woman attended USC’s law school as a graduate student in 2016 — about a year after earning her undergraduate degree.

It’s unclear if she was enrolled in classes taught by Stephen.

Records show the woman — who Morning, Trojan is not naming to preserve her privacy — later transferred to Stanford University. In June 2021, she posted what appears to be a wedding photo with Stephen and has since appeared in TV commercials with their twin children under a hyphenated last name.

Attorneys for Camille, who still teaches at USC’s law school, did not respond to requests for comment. Stephen did not, either.

“The lawsuit has no legal merit,” USC wrote in a statement. “We look forward to defending the university’s position in court.”

The previously unreported lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, accuses USC of failing to properly investigate Camille’s Title IX complaints, then retaliating by denying her disability accommodations.

In 2019, while the couple’s divorce proceedings were ongoing, Stephen began a sexual relationship with a law school student, the suit says. Word soon got out: On at least one occasion, “students offered themselves to [Camille] for sex” in order to “get back at” Stephen, according to the suit.

Camille filed Title IX complaints with USC officials that alleged Stephen’s affair and his conversations with colleagues about their divorce created a hostile environment for her and the law school’s students, the suit says.

The court filings allege that a USC compliance official agreed Camille would take a paid semester leave for the post-traumatic stress disorder that “she was suffering due to the actions of” her ex-husband.

But Andrew Guzman — the law school’s then-dean who is now USC’s provost — wouldn’t approve the leave, the lawsuit says.

“Dean Guzman enjoyed a close personal and professional relationship with [Stephen] and was resentful towards [Camille] for her pending reports of sexual misconduct,” the lawsuit says.

Guzman declined to comment for this story.

USC’s Office of Equity and Diversity, which is now the Office of Civil Rights Compliance, performed a “perfunctory and sham inquiry” into Camille’s complaints, then improperly transferred responsibility for the investigation to Guzman, the suit says.

“Guzman could not be a neutral decision-maker as he had prior conflicts of interest with the parties” and was a close friend of Stephen’s.

The court filings cite a March 2020 email that Guzman allegedly sent to law school faculty congratulating Stephen on the birth of his twins — a move that “signaled Dean Guzman’s preferences in the matter and compromised the fair and impartial nature of the investigation.”

At the same time, the lawsuit says Stephen was spreading “baseless sexual innuendos and rumors” about Camille and telling colleagues that she was “promiscuous and an obstructionist in their divorce.”

Guzman proceeded to drag out an investigation that found Stephen did not engage in wrongdoing, the lawsuit alleges.

The law school later repeatedly denied Camille’s requests for accommodations for her PTSD, then gave her unfair performance scores after she returned from disability leave, court filings say. Camille is seeking damages for lost pay, emotional distress, and reputational harm.

Learn how to contact us confidentially.