Federal Judge Dismisses Robert Griswold Assault Case Due To Lack of Jurisdiction

A federal judge in Colorado has issued a final judgment in the long-running lawsuit between defendants, Paralympic gold medalist Robert Griswold and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC), and the plaintiff, Paralympian Parker Egbert.

In a lawsuit filed in November 2022 by Egbert’s family, Griswold was accused of grooming and abusing a Paralympic teammate with an intellectual disability, Egbert, and the USOPC and the U.S. Center for SafeSport were also accused of “extensive efforts to shield and protect Griswold, much to the detriment of Plaintiff and other team members.”

In March of 2023, SafeSport was removed as a defendant in the case “because of far-reaching immunity privileges that lawmakers have afforded SafeSport by statute,” two of Egbert’s lawyers said at the time.

On Nov. 6, 2025, nearly three years after the lawsuit was first filed in November 2022, U.S. District Judge S. Kato Crews ruled the case closed due to the Court’s lack of diversity subject matter jurisdiction in the case.

Subject matter jurisdiction is a court’s power to hear and decide a particular type of case, or a case involving a specific subject matter. It is a fundamental requirement for a court to have authority over the case; without it, any judgment is invalid.

The lack of subject matter jurisdiction in the case ultimately was due to the involvement of the USOPC, which both the USOPC and Griswold lobbied to be removed by the Court’s discretion to allow the case to move forward.

Recent Case Developments Leading To Dismissal:

• In a separate case in the District of Colorado between the USOPC and HDI Global, the USOPC argued that the Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because the USOPC is a federally chartered corporation. When this case was resolved, the Court “was put on notice of the effect that USOPC’s status as a federally chartered corporation has on the Court’s jurisdiction.”
• The Court then issued an Order to Show Cause (OSC) ordering the parties in this case, Griswold, Egbert and the USOPC, to explain why the case shouldn’t be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
• In a hearing on Oct. 31, 2025, Egbert argued that the Court lacks diversity subject matter jurisdiction over the Plaintiff’s claims, contradicting his allegations in the original complaint, but then pivoted and argued the Court had federal question jurisdiction and/or supplemental jurisdiction.
• The USOPC argued that there is federal question jurisdiction and the Court should not interpret this specific rule “in a manner that leads to absurd results,” and the Court should “defer ruling on subject matter jurisdiction as between Plaintiff and USOPC until after the case against Griswold concludes.”
• Griswold took no position as to whether diversity jurisdiction exists, though the defendant did argue that the Court should exercise its authority under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 21 to cure the jurisdictional defect by dismissing the nondiverse party, USOPC, and continuing the lawsuit against Griswold.
• The Court ultimately ruled that it had no choice but to dismiss a case in which subject matter jurisdiction does not exist. It also said it would not exercise its discretion to dismiss only the USOPC.
• Read the full details behind the Court’s ruling here.

CASE BACKGROUND

The lawsuit alleged that Griswold’s sexual assaults started in the summer of 2021 at the Paralympics in Tokyo, last July, and continued through August 2022 due to several failures of leadership. Egbert, 19 at the time, had “the mentality capacity of a five-year-old,” and was roommates with Griswold both in Tokyo and at the Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

The lawsuit claimed that Griswold told Egbert, who has autism, that he “would get in trouble” and “police would come” if he told anyone what happened.

According to the complaint, the USOPC was aware of a “sheer number of complaints of abuse” against Griswold.

In 2020, a 16-year-old blind athlete allegedly reported to the USOPC that Griswold assaulted her in an elevator and later sent sexually suggestive text messages to her. That incident was reportedly investigated by SafeSport, but SafeSport only found Griswold’s misconduct to be “providing alcohol to a minor.”

In November 2023, just over one year after the case was filed, SwimSwam reported that Griswold had not been arrested “because of the lack of witnesses and there is not enough corroborating evidence presented to meet the standard of probable cause,” according to the Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD).

Most recently, in the wake of the lingering lawsuit, U.S. Para Swimming shut down its resident training program in Colorado Springs in October 2024, while the USOPC  was also at risk of insurance coverage as its commercial general liability insurer argued “it should not be held liable for coverage in a separate civil case accusing the USOPC of negligence” in a June 2024 lawsuit.

Griswold is a two-time Paralympic champion, claiming gold in the men’s 100 backstroke S8 and the 100 butterfly S8 at the Tokyo Games in 2021. He also won bronze in the 100 back S8 at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio. He’s also a 15-time Para World Championship medalist, including winning six golds across the 2017, 2019 and 2022 championships.

He remains listed as having a “temporary suspension” with the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which was issued in August 2022.