On September 22, the Department of Education replaced Obama-era guidance on campus sexual assault with temporary measures that would make it more difficult to prove sexual misconduct. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos cited concerns that the current policy denies due process to accused individuals.
“One rape is one too many, one assault is one too many, one aggressive act of harrassment is one too many, one person denied process is one too many,” DeVos said at a speech at George Mason University. She added that school administrators have told her that the system established by the Obama Administration “has run amok.”
The Obama guidelines, known as the 2011 Title IX guidance, called on schools to step up investigations of sexual assault reports and focused on how sexual harassment can interfere with the educational environment. Title IX (of the 1972 Education Act Amendments) prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive Federal funding.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who had championed the curbing of sexual assault on campus, said,
“Today’s announcement that the Department of Education plans to rewrite key Title IX guidance, which works to address and prevent sexual assault, in our schools, is a step in the wrong direction. The truth is, although people don’t want to talk about the brutal reality of sexual assault, especially when it occurs in our most cherished institutions, it is our reality and it must be faced head-on.”
On September 27, Democratic Senators Patty Murray (WA), Robert Casey (PA), Richard Blumenthal (CT), Claire McCaskill (MO), and Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) sent a letter to Secretary DeVos urging her to reverse course. Twenty-seven other senators also signed the letter, which read in part,
“Your action … shows a clear lack of concern for the many requests of survivors of sexual assault and Members of Congress who have asked you to leave the previous guidance in place. Your new guidance is already creating uncertainty and chaos for schools, and we ask that you immediately reinstate the previous guidance.”
According to its press release on the issue, in the coming months, the Education Department “will solicit comments from stakeholders and the public during the rulemaking process, a legal procedure the prior Administration ignored.”
To learn more about this topic, see the March 1999 issue of Supreme Court Debates on “Sexual Harassment in the Schools” and the October 2013 issue of Congressional Digest on “Sexual Assault in the Military.”
