CORONAVIRUS Is No Excuse to Delay the Education Department’s New Title IX Regulations
Many disingenuous things have been said during the coronavirus crisis. Right near the top must be three letters issued last week — from the American Council on Education (ACE), activist groups led by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), and 18 Democratic attorneys general — calling for the Department of Education to halt the release of long-anticipated regulations that will restore due process to the handling of sexual-assault cases on college campuses. DeVos’s proposed rule would ensure basic rights for accused students — notice, access to evidence, a live hearing, and the ability to have a lawyer or advocate cross-examine adverse witnesses — that are often or almost always absent in the current Title IX process imposed by Obama-era guidance. That system has yielded more than 170 university setbacks in lawsuits filed by accused students in state or federal court.
First, the universities have known for more than 16 months — since November 2018 — that these regulations were coming. They have had ample time both to tell the government what they think of the regulations and to start planning for their inevitable release. If some of them have failed to plan ahead, hoping that the regulations would never be released or that a lawsuit by victims’ groups would enjoin them immediately following their release, that isn’t the fault of the coronavirus. Second, do you know who’s going to have a lot of time on their hands in the next six months? Title IX coordinators. Why? Because the number of Title IX cases is about to drop precipitously. Take away the proximity and the alcohol, and you take away the vast majority of Title IX cases. Moreover, figuring out how to implement these regulations can easily be handed on Zoom calls. The real reason colleges might want to avoid remote meetings is that they might produce a more permanent record that in-person meetings can avoid.
It’s clear that these interest groups – and their political allies- are just trying to delay long enough for a new administration possibly to take over. The coronavirus crisis is unlikely to recede completely before the 2020 election. If Joe Biden wins, he will withdraw the proposed regulations immediately, which will be much harder to do if they’ve actually been implemented. ACE and the NWLC know this, which is why they’re making this argument now. And you don’t have to take our word for it. ACE president Ted Mitchell called these new regulations “a step in the wrong direction.” The NWLC was even more blunt, calling the proposed regulations “disastrous,” “confusing and illogical,” and even opining that “‘due process’ is clearly a red herring.”
This is all nonsense. The new Title IX regulations may wind up being Betsy DeVos’s greatest legacy. They will finally restore balance and fairness to a process that, due to the Obama administration’s overreach, had little of either. The time is now. Let’s hope the administration issues these regulations soon and ignores this galling attempt to twist a genuine crisis for political ends.
nationalreview.com-Johnson and Dillon
