A recent announcement from The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) tells us something we knew was coming: the Biden Administration is walking back the improvements in Title IX made by Betsy DeVos. (Yes, it was one of the few good things done under Trump.) The original rules, which bear on how colleges adjudicate sexual misconduct, were put in place by Obama, then rolled back and made more fair by DeVos, and now Biden’s reverting the law to the Obama standards, which are palpably unfair because they take away rights from the accused that are in place in real courts.
You can read several of my posts on this issue here, but this one details the changes. I believe they’re not yet finalized, but are nearing completion. It’s not yet clear whether this document, which is heavy on “gender identity”, will permit transgender females to compete athletically against natal females. The rules don’t seem to be finalized, but I’ve heard that Biden is holding off until after the election before allowing the athletic thing, since trans “inclusion” in women’s sports is opposed by most Americans.
You might also want to read Emily Yoffe’s Free Press piece criticizing Biden’s proposals (which are now law), as well as her other pieces on the issue cited at the bottom of her article.
If FIRE opposes something, I’m usually on their side, and I certainly am this time. These changes in regulations, as you’ll see below, are part of Biden’s increasing wokeness, and deny those accused of sexual misconduct of a fair hearing. Biden will have the accused lose their right to contest the allegations against them in a live hearing, to cross-examine those who accuse him (yes, it’s usually men), and will allow a single person to be the original investigator of the charges, the adjudicator of the charges, and the jury who gives a decision. How fair is that? There are other changes, too, and if you have the time you can read all the rules here in a 1577-page document.
Here’s the FIRE summary:
Today the Department of Education released troubling new rules on how colleges investigate campus sexual misconduct allegations. The bottom line: Students who find themselves in a campus hearing are now less likely to receive a fair shake.
If reading this feels like déjà vu, you’re not alone.
For years the government has politicized college students’ rights under Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. Bureaucrats play political games, taking away student free speech and due process rights during one presidential administration, then restoring them in the next.
Fairness shouldn’t be politicized. Campus hearings should be fair for every single student — accused and accuser alike. But these new rules deprive students of fundamental rights that help investigators uncover the truth in the most serious types of campus misconduct cases, including those that concern sexual misconduct.
The rules:
- Eliminate the right to a live hearing to contest the allegations.
- Eliminate the right to cross-examine one’s accuser and witnesses.
- Weaken the right to be represented by lawyers in campus sexual misconduct expulsion proceedings.
- Require colleges to adopt a definition of sexual harassment which will inevitably be used to censor constitutionally protected speech.
- Allow for the return of the “single-investigator” model, in which a single administrator serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury.
“Justice is only possible when hearings are fair for everyone,” said FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley. “Rather than playing political ping-pong with student rights, the Department of Education should recognize that removing procedural protections for students is the exact opposite of fairness.”
Colleges and the government should not team up to deprive students of their rights. And no one should implement policies that make uncovering the truth in cases of serious misconduct even more difficult.
Riley Gaines has been an outspoken advocate of allowing only natal women to compete in women’s athletics. Here’s her take on the new rules, though, as I have no energy to plow through 1577 pages, I haven’t checked her assertsions:
The Biden Admin has just officially abolished Title IX as we knew it. Now, sex = gender identity.
In a nutshell, the new rewrite means:
– men can take academic AND athletic scholarships from women
– men will have FULL access to bathrooms, locker rooms, etc
– men could be… pic.twitter.com/JfQVI9Yfph— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) April 19, 2024
I’ll still vote for Biden, but he’s making it harder and harder. But even with this change that makes adjudication of sexual misconduct an unfair process, he’s still miles and miles ahead of Trump. If I get too fed up, I simply won’t vote for President, which in this Democratic state won’t affect the presidential results at all.
h/t: Luana
“If I get too fed up, I simply won’t vote for President, which in this Democratic state won’t affect the presidential results at all.”
That would be a tragedy – please, everyone – vote. It’s alright. Nobody asked for this… sort of.
Perhaps a Jefferson quote applies:
“Let friends be wrong”
-Thomas Jefferson (no source)
Vote.
” I’ll still vote for Biden, but he’s making it harder and harder. But even with this change that makes adjudication of sexual misconduct an unfair process, he’s still miles and miles ahead of Trump. If I get too fed up, I simply won’t vote for President, which in this Democratic state won’t affect the presidential results at all.”
It would affect the results if enough people thought like you do.
The reason that the woke can get away with this is that they know that people will still vote Democratic, no matter how absurd things become. Or will they? Where do you draw the line? I would have thought that castrating children and calling for genocide on the Jews would be enough.
Yes, Trump is really not a good alternative, and shows the disadvantages of a two-party system, but it is that argument which keeps the woke in power.
Hi Phillip, when you write, “It would affect the results if enough people thought like you do,” I think the point is that most people do NOT think like that. Indeed, there’s an infinite number of counter-factuals/contingencies that will not come to pass. I too think like Jerry: I’ve written to the White House that unless the Biden Admin changes its rhetoric on Middle Eastern and domestic antisemitism (inter alia), I won’t vote (i’m not in a swing state either). I’m sure my email will sway policy, haha.
Biden lost my vote. I was going to abstain from voting — not that my vote matters in Boston. But Biden’s increasing wokeness tempts me to vote for Tr*mp! If Biden has alienated me, I know others on the center left and those who are left-liberal (versus Leftists) will vote for Tr*mp now. They may not admit they are voting for Tr*mp. But they will. Biden’s losing the center and classical liberals with his coddling of progressives.
I will not vote for Biden based on this issue alone. My vote probably doesn’t matter for the opposite reason as PCC(E) because Wyoming will probably go Trump anyway. But I’m infuriated by this priority of meaningless “gender” over very consequential sex.
Yeah, it’s a deal breaker.
Sadly, I part ways with those I highly respect, such as PCC(e) and Steve Pinker on this matter. I know essays will be penned by left-liberals giving us the rational case for voting Biden, telling us to hold our noses. They won’t work.
I’m worried about what Trump will do with the Ukraine. And not even that fear could get me to vote Biden now.
Yes, maybe the only rational reason left to vote for Biden is that he may be better for Ukraine. And even this is not guaranteed. On Ukraine, Biden lends his ear to William Burns and Jake Sullivan, who are very much afraid of Russia and maybe truly pro-Russian as well. He has consistently given aid to Ukraine in tea spoons, lest there is “escalation” (whatever this means), and also to pressure Ukraine to negotiations with and concessions to Russia. His emissaries actually promised Putin that the USA would force Ukraine to not hurt Russia, in exchange to Russia inflicting carnage only on Ukraine. And don’t forget the infamous “we’ll support Ukraine for as long as we can”.
Another rational reason to vote for Biden (besides that he is not all that bad) is that he will not destroy our democracy. If you think that is hyperbole, then instead concentrate on a national abortion law or a repeal of Griswold (!) or Obergefell, not to mention tariffs or a border wall. Or cancelling aid to Ukraine and supporting Putin. There are lots of blanks you can fill in. Title IX is small potatoes by comparison to many other issues.
Of course I would not want my American friends to vote for someone who would destroy democracy. However, I find it hard to see how a democratically elected Congress that passed a law restricting abortion across the nation, or a Supreme Court as already constituted — no packing necessary — that repealed Griswold and Obergefell, or upheld the national abortion law represents the destruction of democracy. Tariffs and a border wall might or might not be sound public policy but enacting them is not even a failure of democracy much less its destruction — they would instead be the realization of it, no?
All those are political positions you strongly disagree with and want to do everything in your power to prevent. Fine, I get that. But if they happened, it would just mean that your side lost. I think democrats (note small-d) have to get over it. Better luck next time.
When I think of democracy dying in a republic I admire very much, I see a military coup that keeps the President in power after Inauguration Day, or an Executive that can carry out policy and impose taxes without needing a budget or legislative support from a Congress that has been put in jail by the Army. Or a state of emergency that suspends habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights despite the attempts by the Supreme Court to rule the emergency unconstitutional.
Honestly, I can’t imagine any of those outcomes no matter who is elected President. One man can’t do any of those things, much less all of them. About all he can do is start nuclear war all by himself, and yes he has considerable autonomy in foreign policy. But the country would still be a republic governed by democratic constitutional principles.
So yes, I do think you are engaging in hyperbole for partisan political purposes.
Maybe Trump will use the three letter agencies to undermine the opposition…
Or Maybe Trump will get the big tech companies to censor speech opposed to the regime…
Or maybe Trump will ignore the Supreme Court and hand out money to his supporters without congressional approval…
Can you imagine such things happening in the U.S.?
Quick reply to Leslie MacMillan; I cannot find a “Reply” button attached to his comment. When I said “instead concentrate,” I did not mean the following issues to be conflated with destroying our democracy. Mr. Trump has already indicated that if he gets back into power he would, for example, employ the military domestically. That said, I think that we should not confuse majority rule with democracy. It is no longer democracy when the majority takes away the rights of a minority, and taking away all rights to an abortion and repealing Obergefell would be profoundly antidemocratic. I know da roolz, so I will say no more.
Matt, really all you’ve said is that your precious — preserving homosexual marriage — is more important than overturning a perverse and tyrannical interpretation of Title IX. My precious, were I an American citizen, would be exactly the opposite. It is Obergefell that is small potato peels to me. Besides, the Supreme Court will either vacate it or leave it alone if a case ever reaches it. The President and Congress you elect in November have nothing to do with it.
I think you are confused about democracy, and this is why I’m risking a rap over da Roolz. It’s nonsensical to say that it would be undemocratic to undo homosexual marriage rights. (un-Democratic, sure.) That’s exactly what untrammeled democracy does: tyranny by the majority seeks to stomp on the views of minorities it doesn’t like. That’s why your Founding Fathers were careful to place so many barriers against the ability of the majority to create a powerful government able to act without restraint.
Constitutional limits on the power of democracy to suppress minorities define the American republic. It’s always in dispute as to which minorities deserve such protection. Not everyone whom the majority fears, distrusts, or regards as deviant should be immune from the majority’s laws. Sometimes it suffices that the state can’t abridge freedom of speech or due process for anyone, no matter what minority group they hive into. Other times the courts discover non-enumerated rights retained by some minority group among the people as reason to strike down a majoritarian law, as with Obergefell.
Congress prohibits the use of the Army on American soil except under the Insurrection Act or to fight foreign invasion. So no matter what Donald Trump has said, he can’t do it. The military can’t obey an illegal order to deploy onto the streets of some anarchic blue city. That law, too, is to prevent a powerful executive with democratic majority support from intimidating the opposition with force of arms.
If an exchange starts several headings in, you lose the Reply button before you reach the five-to-and-fro cutoff but I’ll still take the hint and stop here.
“… will allow a single person to be the original investigator of the charges, the adjudicator of the charges, and the jury who gives a decision.”
Surely that would be wide open to challenge on constitutional grounds?
The only aspect I think a case could be made for is restricting the right of the accused to directly cross-examine the accuser in person for this kind of offence. Historically, this has been used by defendants to intimidate their accusers and has led to many palpably guilty defendants, indirectly testifying while they cross-examine, to get off (Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel comes to mind, back in the mid-1950s, when he was accused of raping an earlier victim he had uncharacteristically left alive).
For that reason the right of defendants to represent themselves in such cases, and of witnesses to appear via video link rather than in person, has been established in many countries.
This will cause a lot of pain, but will ultimately wind up in the courts. Hopefully, it doesn’t wind up in front of Progressive judges.
The Obama version of these rules already ended up in front of the courts, the Foundation for Individual Rights & Expression recorded a lot of cases where this idea that a court should be a place where the punishment is determined because the guilt was determined by the accusation has been struck down.
Is using the wrong pronoun now a Title IX violation?
I remember very clearly all the vile statements coming out against DeVos when she was education secretary, and I also remember thinking how right she was on this issue. The Biden administration is very wrong here if it’s trying to roll back the clock to a time when due process was denied the accused.
The normal checks and balances, especially in the media, keep Trump limited, but there seem to be no such checks on Biden. The media and the administrative state give him so much support.
The new rules are unfortunate. But, I have to believe Biden et al are calculating that they’ll rope in a bunch more votes in November and therefore prevent WWIII, or some other catastrophe, under a DT administration. Not a bad trade.
Do you seriously think that they are really anti-woke and just pretending to be woke in order to get votes? First, I don’t think so. Second, even if they were, that’s not the way politics should work. Third, it might cost them more votes than it gains.
Maybe Trump’s real goal is to end wokeness and he just invented the MAGA shtick in order to get more votes.
One of the key pillars of MAGA is “no more wars.”
https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/which-tradition-is-to-be-conserved?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web
What? You are OK with throwing women under the bus? Many women will not be and probably will hold their nose to vote Trump in.
I am not certain Biden is capable of holding back a theoretical WW3. They can’t even control college campuses vile anti semitic rhetoric or any stupid DEI activities.
Biden is toast.
Naive question:
What about a backup Democrat? Who is it?
I live in New York, which will go Democratic no matter how or if I vote. I think Trump is worse than Biden, but I think the gap is far smaller than I used to.
NYC here. I share PCC(E)’s consternation about Biden’s admin being so high on the Pride Parade float – which is separate to the trans agenda, ask a TERF! Or any of my (many) gay neighbors who sneer at the word: “cis”.
I’m 100% for gay rights as they used to be called in saner times, but gender ideology is hideous.
So Biden admin’s trans ideas are wrong as I see it.
———————–
the alternative is worse. A vote AGAINST the alternative is important also. Otherwise one is a cop-out. Our side is imperfect, with glaring errors, but within parameters.
For me a deal breaker is support for Ukraine (and Israel but that’s a given).
Leslie is right – the wrong side winning is just the electorate having ideas different to mine, not the end of democracy. Trump IS a threat to democracy by himself but I think we have the anti-bodies to restrain him. Ukraine doesn’t and the Ukraine-Israel thing is the Big Picture. It is civilizational in a real sense.
D.A.
NYC
If everyone who is dissatisfied with both candidates stayed home— by some accounts 60% of eligible voters— that would send a bigger message.
Gender over sex + men identifying women over women + DEI takeovers + rampant anti-semitism ± a vote for the Democratic party.
How will Title IX play out? Will the Democratic Party make any attempt to try and win back dissatisfied Democrats? (Don’t hold your breath.)
We’ve got 6+ more months to decide. Telling me “I have no choice” is no longer a selling point.