Betsy DeVos: The Era of Weaponized Title IX in Campus Rape Cases Is Over
This afternoon, DeVos will give a speech declaring an end to VictimPower on college campuses. No longer will a supposed rape victim hold legal advantage. No more will the accused be forbidden due process. Under Obama, colleges were encouraged to prosecute an "assailant," while forbidding the accused from using or having a lawyer during his hearing. Specifically, the "rape" victim held all the cards to the point that the accused could not even mount an effective defense. This is what passed as "fairness" under the brain-dead Obama error.
Here is a review of the DeVos speech from Reason.com:
"The notion that a school must diminish due process rights to better
serve the 'victim' only creates more victims," DeVos' speech says.
The problems with the Obama-era Title IX guidance are essentially
threefold. First, it isn't obvious that Title IX—a one-sentence
statute—could or should be read as having anything to do with violent
crimes.
Secondly, the guidance raises constitutional questions, since it
appears to many civil libertarians that a federal agency was instructing
public institutions to violate the due process guarantees of the Fifth
Amendment. That isn't the only way the guidance is legally suspect: The
Office for Civil Rights never subjected it to public notice and
comment—a process required by the Administrative Procedure Act—and so it
was always unclear whether the letter's dictates actually carried the
force of law, even though dozens of universities rewrote their sexual
misconduct policies to get the feds off their backs.
Finally, since the guidance is legally dicey, it led to lawsuits left
and right. Many students who were found responsible for sexual
misconduct under the new guidelines have filed suit against their
universities, and a nontrivial number of them have prevailed in court.
On that front, DeVos couldn't have picked a better campus to deliver her
speech: A GMU student, "John Doe," was expelled for engaging in BDSM sex
that the university judged nonconsensual. He later sued GMU and won,
since it was obvious to a Virginia district court that the
administration's investigation was biased against Doe and had deprived
him of his due process rights.
It has become apparent to many fair-minded legal experts—the American Association of University Professors, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and several members of the Harvard University Law faculty
(including President Obama's personal mentor, Charles Ogletree)—that
the current situation is morally, legally, and practically untenable.
Thankfully, DeVos' speech signals that she intends to do what the
Education Department should have done in the first place, six and a half
years ago: subject its guidance to public scrutiny.
"We will seek public feedback and combine institutional knowledge,
professional expertise and the experiences of students to replace the
current approach with a workable, effective and fair system," the speech [will say]."
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