Monthly Archives: May 2020

UNDERSTANDING THE New Title IX Rules & Regulations

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UNDERSTANDING THE New Title IX Rules & Regulations

The U.S. Department of Education has published new Title IX rules and regulations (Rules) that take effect on August 14, 2020. The new Rules increase due process protections for anyone accused of sexual misconduct in a university setting.

Definition of Sexual Harassment and How a School Must Respond

The Rules indicate that anyone can make a Title IX complaint to the school’s Title IX Coordinator. Sexual harassment is defined in the Rules as “unwelcome conduct determined by a reasonable person to be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to the school’s education program or activity.” A school must dismiss a Title IX sexual harassment complaint if the alleged conduct does not meet all three criteria of the definition. Thus, discussion points that may have survived a Title IX challenge in the past now may be dismissed at the outset. A school can no longer unilaterally act against the accused such as by imposing an interim suspension. A presumption of the respondent’s innocence must be applied in both the investigation and the hearing that follows. Both the complainant and respondent may submit evidence. There is no “gag order” on seeking out supporting witnesses or other evidence.

Rules Changes to Title IX Hearings

The Rules make significant changes to Title IX hearings. Title IX complaints will now require a recorded hearing to determine responsibility, sanctions, and corrective action, if any. The only exception occurs if the student parties and school agree to mediate. A school employee or faculty member does not have a mediation option. The investigator and the school’s Title IX Coordinator are not permitted to be the hearing officer or participate as a member of the hearing panel.  Schools must also publish their Title IX training materials on their website.

The Rules will also change the standard of evidence required to  determine a violation of policy at many colleges. Previously, most colleges used a “preponderance of the evidence” standard rather than a higher “clear and convincing evidence” standard. Now, colleges must apply the same standard of evidence that is used in formal complaints brought against university employees. Many college employees are represented by unions that have negotiated a higher standard in their collective bargaining agreements.

Cross Examination in a Title IX Investigation

Most notably, the Rules now permit a party’s attorney or advisor to cross-examine the opposing party and their witnesses. After the hearing, the panel must make a written report of their findings and the facts that justify those findings. The college must also notify the parties of their right to appeal. If an appeal is unsuccessful, a Title IX lawyer will have preserved the record to best position you for a Title IX lawsuit in a federal court. Violations by the school of the new Rules will be among the grounds to set aside an adverse finding.

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LAWSUIT. DARTMOUTH Expelled Male Victim Of Sextortion Attempt By Fem Who Raped Him

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LAWSUIT. DARTMOUTH Expelled Male Victim Of Sextortion Attempt By Fem Who Raped Him

Dartmouth expelled a male student after he accused a female student of sexually assaulting him and threatening to accuse him of rape if he didn’t keep having sex with her, according to a lawsuit against the college filed in 2018.

“John Doe” alleges the Ivy League school violated Title IX by assigning an administrator to his case who “held the belief that men are inherently violent” and that accusing women “are to be believed, even if a jury has found their story to lack credibility.”

Though “Sally Smith” had initiated an evening of “sadomasochistic” sex with an incapacitated Doe that left him bruised, bleeding and in “extreme pain” in his genitalia, Smith was the one to file the first complaint, according to the suit.

Doe alleges his expulsion was completely contrary to numerous pieces of evidence, which actually pointed to Smith as the aggressor.

thecollegefix.com-Burkhart  helpsaveoursons.com/dartmouth

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LIVE HEARINGS and Cross Examinations: How Texas Universities Will Adjust To New Title IX Regs

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LIVE HEARINGS and Cross Examinations: How Texas Universities Will Adjust To New Title IX Regs

A new set of regulations from the U.S. Department of Education will change how colleges and universities handle sexual misconduct. For some Texas schools, the changes will be harder to adjust to than others. The federal regulations, released May 6, are the result of about three years of efforts by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to rescind Obama-era practices and implement new standards for addressing sexual misconduct on college campuses under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination.

Changes include the requirement for live hearings and cross examinations. Both the complainant and the accused will be allowed to bring advisers, such as attorneys, into the campus investigation process. For those without advisers, universities will be required to provide one.

DeVos said the regulations require schools to “act in meaningful ways to support survivors of sexual misconduct, without sacrificing important safeguards to ensure a fair and transparent process.” “Too many students have lost access to their education because their school inadequately responded when a student filed a complaint of sexual harassment or sexual assault.”

statesman.com-Korte

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ACLU vs DUE PROCESS. ACLU Sues To Stop Title IX Rules That Strengthen Due Process

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ACLU vs DUE PROCESS. ACLU Sues To Stop Title IX Rules That Strengthen Due Process

The ACLU vs. Due Process. If you were looking for more evidence that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been losing its principled approach to civil liberties, look no further: The group has filed suit to thwart Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s recently proposed reforms to bolster due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct.

The lawsuit frequently asserts that marginalized students will suffer under the new rules, but it never acknowledges that students of color were disproportionately harmed by the old rules. White woman accuses black man of rape; black man is expelled was a distressingly common series of events under the old regime—one that might have invited sympathy from an older model of the ACLU, given the organization’s historic concern that racism in the criminal justice system has led to disparately harsh outcomes for black people. Not this time. 

Angela Morabito, a spokeswoman for the DoED, told NBC News that the new Title IX rules ensure that “no survivor is brushed aside and no accused student’s guilt is predetermined.” “The ACLU, which used to defend civil liberties, should be supporting such an approach,” Morabito insisted. “Instead, they’re helping schools trample on basic due process and gut protections for survivors to serve an ideological agenda where the ends justify the means.”

The ACLU built its reputation by protecting civil liberties for everyone — even defending the free-speech rights of the Ku Klux Klan! But now it seems due process rights for the accused are a bridge too far. 

  pjmedia.com-O’Neil  reason.com-Soave

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BLACK COLLEGE Males Protected Most By Trump Reforms To Obama-Biden Campus Sex Assault Rules, Experts Say

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BLACK COLLEGE Males Protected Most By Trump Reforms To Obama-Biden Campus Sex Assault Rules, Experts Say

Critics say black men were disproportionately hit by Obama-Biden campus sexual assault rules denying due process and are cheering the Trump administration’s reversal of those policies. 

Recently the Department of Education released new Title IX regulations that codify the obligation of schools to investigate claims of sexual assault and harassment. Previous rules under the Obama administration laid the groundwork for what exists today on many campuses: byzantine sexual misconduct disciplinary systems that investigate and punish all manner of sex-related behavior — from sexually suggestive jokes to drunken couplings to forcible rape. Critics say these extra-judicial systems often abandon the presumption of innocence and stack the deck against accused students, denying them basic due process. 

“The Trump administration is righting a wrong perpetrated by Joe Biden, who as Vice President spearheaded a Title IX initiative that attempted to overhaul the assumptions on which our legal system is built and undermined the ability of the accused, usually men and often men of color, to get a fair hearing.” Andrew Clark, Rapid Response Director for the Trump campaign, said. “Black men were disproportionately hurt by Biden’s campus sexual assault policy.”

 Clark linked to a 2018 report from The College Fix titled, “Believe the survivor? Here’s 11 times young black men were railroaded by campus sexual assault claims.”

“Biden is the liberal that Malcolm X warned black America about over 50 years ago,” John Burnett, a Republican strategist and African-American activist said. “The Trump administration made criminal justice reform a priority by passing the First Step Act, and currently working on a Second Step Act, while undoing the Title IX campus initiative to curtail due process rights that disproportionately impacted black men. Hence, he is dismantling Biden’s legacy of mass incarceration.” 

Supporters of the new Trump-era regulations, which carry the force of law, say they will help both alleged victims along with the accused. “Only by addressing claims of sexual misconduct and providing due process can colleges begin to restore faith in the system” said Jennifer C. Braceras, director of the Independent Women’s Law Center.

justthenews.com– Sheffield helpsaveoursons.10 Cases: White Girls Consent Then Falsely Accuse Black Males

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PRO-BIDEN ACTIVISTS Slam New Regulations With Vague Accusations Of Sexism, ‘Rape Myths’

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PRO-BIDEN ACTIVISTS Slam New Regulations With Vague Accusations Of Sexism, ‘Rape Myths’

It’s On Us, the organization that gave former Vice President Joe Biden a platform to compare due process advocates to “Nazis,” is accusing the Department of Education of harming alleged victims of sexual assault. But the group failed to cite specific examples of purported “victim blaming language, deeply misogynistic language and the perpetuation of dangerous rape myths,” as Executive Director Tracey Vitchers called them.

Despite cases where accused students of color have filed lawsuits alleging that their institutions showed racial bias in their Title IX proceedings, Vitchers said they are among the groups that the regulation will harm the most.

The Obama White House helped launch the It’s On Us campaign against campus sexual assault nearly six years ago. It started as a collaboration between the nonprofit Civic Action and Department of Education, but ItsOnUs.org removed the federal agency as a partner on Nov. 20, 2018 – four days after DeVos proposed the new rules.

thecollegefix.com-Poff  helpsaveoursons. 10 Cases. White Girls Consent Then Falsely Accuse Black Males

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JUDGE Refuses To Toss Anti-Male Bias Title IX Suit Against Colgate, Sends To Jury Trial

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JUDGE Refuses To Toss Anti-Male Bias Title IX Suit Against Colgate, Sends To Jury Trial

Colgate University will face a jury trial for allegations that it ran a faulty Title IX proceeding tainted by gender bias, conflict of interest and absence of due process. Senior U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin denied the upstate New York university’s motions for summary judgment on Title IX, breach of contract and “New York Human Rights Law” claims. He scheduled the trial for Sept. 14.

Judge Scullin wrote that “evidence supports” John’s contention that Title IX investigator Valerie Brogan “entangled” herself in the concurrent criminal proceeding that the accuser pursued with the state of New York. Brogan’s involvement with the criminal proceeding “predisposed” her view of what had happened, one of John’s lawyers, Tara Davis of Nesenoff & Miltenberg, said. Davis said: “Gender bias permeated the entire investigation and adjudication process,” through the hearing and appeals. John claimed he was a victim of “selective enforcement,” meaning that he was targeted for his gender regardless of the evidence, and “erroneous outcome” because the gender motivation produced a false finding of guilt. Davis said that the charges were framed against him “in such a manner that a female respondent would never be found responsible for the same charge,” because they focused on his male anatomy. She noted that there was a similar case where the accused student was female and received a lesser punishment.

John argued that his expulsion was motivated by gender bias, given the punishment meted out to a similarly situated female student at Colgate two years ago. She was suspended for two years and allowed to return despite being found responsible for sexual “non-consensual sexual contact and sexual harassment,” while John is banned from Colgate and must disclose his expulsion to other schools. Judge Scullin agreed that this female student was a “direct comparator” to John because both findings fall under “sexual assault” in the university code.

John has “raised a genuine issue of material fact” as to whether Colgate treats accused females more favorably than males “under similar circumstances.”

thecollegefix.com-Sargent campusreform.org-San Marco

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WHAT YOU Need to Know About the New Regulations: Transparency, Presumption of Innocence.

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WHAT YOU Need to Know About the New Regulations: Transparency, Presumption of Innocence.

The Department of Education has finally released its new Title IX regulations, which both restore critical due process protections to campus sexual misconduct proceedings and make it harder for universities to sweep allegations of such misconduct under the rug. What are the essential things you need to know?

First, the mere fact that the final document is 2,033 pages long demonstrates just how seriously the Department of Education took the feedback it received from the more than 100,000 commenters who participated in the notice-and-comment process. The regulations themselves start on page 2,008, and the remainder of the document is devoted to addressing, in great detail, the comments received and the rationale for the ultimate decisions. This stands in stark contrast to the previous administration’s April 4, 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter, which—in 19 pages and with no public input whatsoever—led to the widespread dismantling of due process in campus sexual misconduct proceedings.

The new regulations address two broad categories of institutional obligations. The first is jurisdictional: When does a university have a responsibility, under Title IX, to take action? The second is substantive: When a university does take action, what must it do? 

In terms of when a university must take action, the new regulations use a speech-protective definition of sexual harassment that mirrors the definition established by the Supreme Court in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999). This is a critically important provision because the previous administration had employed an overly broad definition that led students and faculty to be punished for speech and expression protected by the First Amendment.

The regulations also contain a lot of information about how schools must conduct their Title IX grievance procedures. Ever since the 2011 Title IX Dear Colleague letter—which eliminated important procedural protections for the accused and ushered in an era of aggressive federal investigations that led schools to abandon even more due process protections—students have been forced to defend themselves in biased, inquisitorial proceedings, often with little to no information about what they allegedly did wrong.  Those days are now over. The regulations require schools to give both parties access to all of the evidence related to the accusation — not just the evidence that the university deems relevant to a finding of guilt or innocence. This will make it much harder for universities to withhold important evidence in these cases — such as, for example, evidence that someone may have falsely reported an assault to avoid being flunked out of medical school. The regulations also provide that the notice “must include a statement that the respondent is presumed not responsible for the alleged conduct.” The presumption of innocence is, of course, one of the core principles of our justice system.

Transparency is a theme throughout the new regulations, which is of critical importance to ensuring a fair and unbiased process given universities’ penchant for secrecy. The regulations require not only that universities train Title IX investigators and adjudicators using materials that do not “rely on sex stereotypes” and that “promote impartial investigations and adjudications,” but also that a university “must make these training materials publicly available on its website.”

The other game-changing provision is the requirement that universities adjudicate formal complaints of sexual misconduct using live hearings. This means that universities can no longer use the “single investigator” model in which one person effectively serves as detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury—a model that has led to terrible abuses of power.

It is difficult to understate the importance of these regulations for due process on campus. After a careful and lengthy rulemaking process, the Department of Education has taken meaningful steps to ensure that the laws it enforces are not used to violate students’ most fundamental rights.

reason.– Samantha Harris thefire.-FIRE nydailynews.-Harris

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TITLE IX “New Regulations Go A Long Way Toward Fixing A Broken System”

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TITLE IX “New Regulations Go A Long Way Toward Fixing A Broken System”

Last week, the Department of Education released its new Title IX regulations, which have been in the works since 2018. Title IX was first written into law as part of the Higher Education Act of 1965 with the purpose of banning sex discrimination at colleges and universities receiving federal funding. It was last amended in 1998, and its implementation since 2011 has been influenced by Obama-era guidance documents.

In recent years, however, Title IX offices have become best-known for governing campus accusations of sexual misconduct in an oft-corrupt manner. Their plethora of administrators are given excessive leeway to adjudicate cases independent of law enforcement and with little regard for the rights of the accused. This has led to rampant violation of due process and the assumption of guilt rather than innocence. A growing list of students claim to have been punished unjustly and have sued their schools for damages—several have won.

The new regulations come as a welcome change to the lawless status quo. “These new regulations go a long way toward fixing a broken system,” said National Association of Scholars (NAS) President Peter Wood. “We congratulate and thank Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for tackling the many problems that plague Title IX administration at America’s colleges and universities.”

nas.org.Department Of Ed Releases New Title IX Regs

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BIDEN and Title IX: Due Process Rights For Me, But Not For Thee

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BIDEN and Title IX: Due Process Rights For Me, But Not For Thee

It’s a foregone conclusion at this point that former Vice President Joe Biden would be labeled some kind of sexual predator if he were a male college student today. Even without the sexual assault allegations from Tara Reade, Biden’s documented history of standing too close to women, sniffing their hair, and rubbing their shoulders (as they look uncomfortable) would be enough under his own campus rules to get him expelled or suspended.

Yet with Reade’s allegations that Biden pinned her to a wall, groped her, and digitally penetrated her, Biden has demanded a separate set of rules for himself than those he has advocated for college students over the past decade. Biden wants the presumption of evidence and to be believed when he said he didn’t sexually assault Reade. He also now claims to want Reade not to simply be believed, as he has demanded of all women, but for her to be heard and for her allegations to be rigorously investigated for their truthfulness.

At the same time, Biden is pledging to rescind new Education Department rules that would provide some of these and other basic due process rights for students accused of sexual assault. Biden released a statement calling the new rules – which require accused students to be presented with the specific allegations against them and to have access to evidence 10 days before a live hearing that includes cross-examination to determine their responsibility – “wrong.”

“Before Tara Reade’s assault accusations, Biden was unwavering in a presumption of guilt for the accused including Brett Kavanaugh,” said Perrine, according to The Hill. “That presumption of guilt included the disastrous Title IX regulations under the Obama-Biden administration, making it more difficult on college campuses for the accused to receive a fair hearing and their due process rights. Does Joe still stand by his presumption of guilt for the accused – or has he set a new standard for himself in the face of his own sexual assault accusations from a former staffer?” Biden purposefully, erroneously joined activists in claiming the new rules allow schools to ignore sexual assault and would hurt “survivors,” even though he has deemed them as such based solely on an allegation without evidence.

Biden does not appear to see the rank hypocrisy between the standard he wants for himself and for college students.

dailywire-Schow washingtonexaminer-Polumbo

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