The Tompkins County district attorney has reopened the investigation into an alleged gang rape at the Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell University, after the woman who made the allegations filed a lawsuit against the university earlier this year.

District Attorney Matthew Van Houten confirmed on September 27, 2026, that his office is investigating the case criminally. The alleged attack took place in the early morning of January 7, 2024, at a fraternity party in Ithaca, New York. The accuser, who was 19 and a Cornell student at the time, says three men raped her.

In her lawsuit filed in March 2025, the woman alleged that Cornell showed “deliberate indifference” in how it responded to her report. An attorney for one of the accused men has said the case was closed in 2024 after investigators reviewed video evidence and thousands of pages of records, and has claimed the encounter was consensual. The accuser’s attorney rejects that account.

The reopened probe puts one of the country’s best-known universities back under scrutiny over campus sexual assault. The district attorney’s office has not said what new material prompted the decision, and no charges have been filed.