DeVos to revamp Title IX rules on campus sex assault
Education secretary looks to boost the rights of the accused
Saying the Obama administration “weaponized” the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights to work against students and schools, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday said she would replace the current approach to addressing sexual misconduct on college campuses with “a workable, effective and fair system” that more explicitly takes into account the rights of the accused.
DeVos said the Trump administration would roll back Obama’s “failed” Title IX guidance on sexual assault and harassment.
Educators, she said, have complained that the current system amounts in many cases to “kangaroo courts,” in which the rights of the accused are given short shrift unless they can afford to hire legal representation to pursue complaints.
“No student should be forced to sue their way to due process,” she said. The speech was delivered at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
DeVos gave a measure of credit to the Obama administration, saying it “helped elevate this issue in American public life — they listened to survivors, who have brought this issue out of the back rooms of student life offices and into the light of day.”
But the guidance that resulted from Obama’s efforts has applied an ambiguous and overly broad definition of sexual assault and harassment, she said, leading to “intimidation and coercion of schools” and, in a few cases, strange results: In one case, DeVos said, a school opened a Title IX investigation after a male student who couldn’t remember the name of a female instructor filled in a form with the name “Sarah Jackson,” a lingerie and swimsuit model.
“Any perceived offense can become a full-blown Title IX investigation,” DeVos said. “But if everything is harassment, nothing is.”
Philadelphia attorneys Gina Maisto Smith and Leslie Gomez have said universities understand Title IX’s high-level mandates but are getting tripped up on the mechanics. Schools lack the resources and the tools, causing harm to students on both sides of an investigation.
The pair have proposed universities use a network of regional centers, through partnerships between schools and law enforcement, that “could be a significant resource for resolving reports of miscon- duct that violate both Title IX and state criminal law.”
Maisto Smith and Gomez, former career prosecutors who spent decades advocating for survivors said both universities and law enforcement face challenges responding to sexual violence.
Brett Sokolow, executive director of the Association of Title IX Administrators, a professional association that helps schools ensure Title IX compliance, said DeVos’ announcement doesn’t mean most universities won’t continue to address sexual violence on campus.
“The response will occur mostly at the margins, Sokolow said. “There are 20% of colleges that weren’t all that committed to Title IX to begin with, and this is going to give them the excuse to pull back. But for 80% of the colleges that aren’t at the margins ... they’re smart enough to understand that a rollback of sub-regulatory guidance doesn’t change the fundamentals of Title IX that have been in place for 45 years.”
DeVos has made a priority of revamping Title IX guidance, saying last July that the department should more equally weigh the claims of assault victims and the due-process rights of the accused.
“There are 20% of colleges that weren’t all that committed to Title IX to begin with, and this is going to give them the excuse to pull back.” Brett Sokolow, the Association of Title IX Administrators