The Biden administration unveiled final Title IX on Friday regulations, nearly two years after the administration proposed sweeping changes to how universities handle sexual assault allegations. The new rules largely mirror proposed regulations released last year and will effectively reverse Trump-era due process reforms.
Under the final rule, accused students will lose the right to a guaranteed live hearing with the ability to have a representative cross-examine their accuser. This is accompanied by a return to the “single investigator model,” which allows a single administrator to investigate and decide the outcome of a case.
Additionally, under the new rules, most schools will be required to use the “preponderance of the evidence” standard, which instructs administrators to hold a student accountable if only 51% of the evidence points to his guilt. Additionally, schools are no longer required to provide accused students with the full contents of the evidence against them. Universities are instead required to provide students only with a description of “relevant evidence,” which may be provided “orally” rather than in writing.
This is a stunning revocation of due process rights for accused students. Under the new rules, a student can be held responsible for sexually assaulting a classmate because a single administrator believed there was a 51 percent chance he committed the assault, and this conclusion can be reached without ever allowing the student accused of knowing all the evidence. against him or by arranging a hearing during which she could defend herself.
The rules also represent an ongoing partisan tension in education policy. After President Barack Obama’s 2011″dear colleague“, which first mandated college sexual assault courts, the regulations have consistently flipped along party lines. In 2020, the Trump administration introduced broad due process rights for accused students, banning schools to accommodate many cases that occurred off campus. Today’s reforms mark the third major change to Title IX regulations in as many presidents.
“Justice is possible only when hearings are fair to everyone. So today’s rules mean one thing: American college students are less likely to receive justice if they find themselves in a Title IX proceeding,” the Foundation for Individual Rights said and Expression (FIRE). in a Friday declaration. “When administrators investigate the most serious types of campus misconduct, universities should use the time-tested tools that make uncovering the truth more likely. But new regulations no longer require them to do so.”
So far, the new rules have received widespread praise from victims’ rights groups.
“Students who experience sexual violence or discrimination should not have to weigh our safety against our ability to go to class or participate in campus life,” undergraduate student Emily Bach said at a news conference. Press release from Know Your IX, a campus sexual assault awareness group. “The Biden administration’s updated Title IX rule will ensure that students experiencing harm can come forward and seek support without jeopardizing our ability to graduate on time or obtain a degree.”
But contrary to what many victims’ rights activists say, the right to due process for accused students is essential, not contrary, to treating campus sexual violence as an urgent issue. Victims of sexual assault on campuses should be taken seriously, but taking their allegations with the gravity they deserve also means granting those who accuse the right to defend themselves with equal coin.
While Title IX hearings do not have the gravity of a criminal case, they have the potential to upend the lives of accused students. Students have been expelled, had their degrees revoked, or even been revoked deported after being found responsible for a violation of Title IX.
If we want university investigations into sexual assault allegations to retain any modicum of legitimacy, we cannot place the power to inflict such severe sanctions on a single administrator working behind closed doors. Instead we need a process that puts due process at the center of attention: any other system quickly becomes shamefully unreliable.