Name: Trump’s new Title IX rules don’t protect sex assault survivors, they promote discrimination.
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Trump’s new Title IX rules don’t protect sex assault survivors, they promote discrimination.

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AdvertisementBy Special to Hartford CourantMay 10, 2020 at 6:00 amOn Wednesday, in the midst of a global pandemic, the Trump administration released a mammoth 2,000-page overhaul of Title IX, a federal civil rights law protecting students from sex-based discrimination in educational programs. While the new regulations purport to , make no mistake: the rules shield universities and perpetrators from liability, while denying predominantly female survivors of sexual violence access to an equal education.Under the Obama administration, schools faced partial accountability for the sexual misconduct epidemic on American campuses. After the 2011 , Title IX enforcement soared, with nearly opened into colleges. The guidance wasn’t perfect, but for the who experience sexual assault in college, it was a modicum of justice.AdvertisementBy contrast, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ effectively weaponize a civil rights law to actively promote sex discrimination. First, for example, the rule narrows Title IX’s definition of sexual harassment in educational environments by requiring that harassment be “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive.” For barely-adult college students, the new regulations codify a more restrictive definition than used in American workplaces under Title VII, where actionable sexual harassment must only be severe or pervasive.Under DeVos’ definition, one instance of sexual harassment won’t be enough for most survivors to get help from their schools. Schools will be free to ignore sexual harassment, even while students face intensifying, escalating abuse. But a single episode of serious sexual harassment is enough to permanently disrupt a student’s education.AdvertisementNext, the new rules reduce shield schools by allowing them to ignore or cover up sexual violence that occurs in off-campus housing or in study-abroad programs. Despite DeVos’ protestations that under the new law, sexual misconduct doesn’t stop being serious when it happens to students overseas. And perpetrators, in turn, won’t magically stop committing sexual misconduct when they return to American soil.Finally, the new rules will deter survivors from reporting by imposing uniquely high procedural hurdles on on-campus adjudications for sexual violence claims—procedures that are not required for classmates who face other forms of physical assault or harassment. For example, schools must now hold live hearings where perpetrators’ representatives can cross-examine their victims, risking re-traumatizing survivors. This change will disproportionately deter survivors who cannot afford legal representation from reporting entirely, knowing that they may be cross-examined without an attorney. Poor respondents, in turn, will also be placed at a disadvantage in these proceedings, while wealthy respondents can benefit from trained attorneys and expert witnesses.Under the new regulations, campus proceedings can be stacked against the victim from the start by permitting schools to adopt a higher evidentiary standard for sexual misconduct than other forms of discrimination. Schools can now use the high bar of a “clear and convincing” standard to find sexual misconduct in campus proceedings, versus the “more likely than not” preponderance of the evidence standard required for most civil rights claims.Sexual assault survivors at universities are already often disbelieved or dismissed as liars when they come forward. The evidentiary standard in the new regulations codifies that presumption of doubt against victims, perhaps intentionally — after all, Candice Jackson, DeVos’ former deputy general counsel, once claimed that were false.The Trump administration and education lobby insist that the new regulations enhance due process for the accused. But their new law ignores the devastating fiscal and psychological toll of sexual violence on the students that Title IX was designed to protect: disproportionately female survivors. An estimated drop out of university, and the academic performance of those who remain suffers, hindering their long-term future employment opportunities for years.The new Title IX regulations will exacerbate the existing sexual assault crisis on campuses nationwide by curtailing survivors’ rights and protecting schools that sweep sexual violence under the rug. Now, it is up to the courts to give these rules a full and fair review — and the public, who have the power to vote for politicians that will prioritize survivors’ rights over schools’ pocketbooks.Cara Newlon is a second-year student at Yale Law School and the former co-chair of the law school’s Title IX Working Group. Advertisement

AdvertisementBy Special to Hartford CourantMay 10, 2020 at 6:00 amOn Wednesday, in the midst of a global pandemic, the Trump administration released a mammoth 2,000-page overhaul of Title IX, a federal civil rights law protecting students from sex-based discrimination in educational programs. While the new regulations purport to , make no mistake: the rules shield universities and perpetrators from liability, while denying predominantly female survivors of sexual violence access to an equal education.Under the Obama administration, schools faced partial accountability for the sexual...

Trump’s new Title IX rules don’t protect sex assault survivors, they promote discrimination.

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