LAWLESSNESS at Yale-Lawsuit Spotlights TIX Abuses & Hysteria
An amended complaint filed in February against Yale et al, portrays a grim reality. Yale’s disciplinary procedures sanction abuse of power in the adjudication of charges of sexual misconduct. The conventional wisdom is that while public universities, as government actors, must comply with constitutional requirements, private universities operate under no such constraints. This is broadly correct. But under “state action” doctrine …“If government requires or induces a private party to engage in law enforcement, all relevant constitutional restraints apply.” This, Doe contends, is exactly what the Obama administration DoED did in April 2011 when it instructed universities, on pain of losing federal funding, to investigate, adjudicate, and punish all allegations of sexual assault. That is, although the government also demanded that universities shrink due process protections for the accused, by deputizing them to engage in law enforcement in addressing allegations of sexual misconduct, the administration in effect imposed on them an obligation to comply with constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection. This lawsuit is very likely the first to test Rubenfield’s (Yale Law Prof. and Doe’s adviser) legal theory of “Privatization, State Action, and Title IX: Do Campus Sexual Assault Hearings Violate Due Process?”
realclearpolitics By Peter Berkowitz
