THE FALLOUT From Obama Pressuring Colleges, Weaponizing TitleIX & Denying Due Process
In April of 2011, the Obama administration changed Title IX policy, pressuring colleges to adopt procedures that dramatically increased the chances of a guilty finding in sexual misconduct cases. Justice for accused males became so rare that many turned to the courts, filing suit for loss of due process. Since then, universities and colleges have suffered 97 setbacks in these suits, few of them as dramatic as the ruling against Johnson & Wales University of Providence, Rhode Island. After an hour-long oral argument in which Judge John McConnell (an Obama nominee) peppered JWU’s lawyers with skeptical questions, the judge ruled from the bench that the Title IX claim would proceed. “On the pleadings,” he said, he could “find no reason at all why the result was Mr. Doe’s expulsion. The only inference [is] . . . gender played a role,” in violation of Title IX. Beyond the injustice, there were three ways that this ruling particularly stood out. First: more attention has been paid to bias in the training federal regulations require – not just Title IX investigators but also adjudicators. No school has voluntarily disclosed the contents of Title IX training. Doe’s lawyer, James Ehrhard, asked Johnson & Wales University for a copy of its training so he could identify JWU’s own biases and allow his client to conduct a robust defense. The university refused. Second: JWU contended that perhaps its policies were biased in favor of accusers, but that didn’t mean the policies discriminated on the basis of gender. Judge McConnell rejected this reasoning. Third: The timing of events at JWU was particularly notable. The JWU case casts strong doubts on the merits of the claims offered by the accusers’ rights groups. This entire adjudication- including the appeal, and the university’s refusal to give Ehrhard access to the training material used by the adjudicators- occurred after DeVos had withdrawn the Obama-era guidance. And yet JWU proceeded apace, maintaining the unfair policies it had adopted under Obama.
mindingthecampus.org By KC Johnson
