New Education Department campus sexual assault rules spark ACLU lawsuit
Rules set forth by Betsy DeVos would increase support for the accused and decrease university-affiliated, off-campus investigations.
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After Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced new regulations addressing how schools must handle sexual assault allegations on May 6, victims’ rights groups pledged to challenge them in court.
“We refuse to go back to the days when rape and harassment in schools were ignored and swept under the rug,” said National Women’s Law Center president Fatima Goss Graves.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated that they filed a lawsuit to block provisions of the Department of Education’s new guidelines on May 14, claiming the rules would “slash schools’ obligations to respond to reports of sexual harassment and assault.” Other advocacy groups that support sexual assault survivors have joined the suit.
“Betsy DeVos has created a double standard that is devastating for survivors of sexual harassment and assault, who are overwhelmingly women and girls,” said director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project Ria Tabacco Mar. “We are suing to make sure this double standard never takes effect.”
The directive announced by DeVos — which has been in the works since 2017 — gives new rights to those accused of sexual assault and incorporates dating violence and stalking into the definition of sexual harassment. DeVos’ initial proposal was released in 2018, even then sparking retaliatory efforts from women’s rights groups, victims’ rights groups and Democrats alike.
But Republican leaders such as Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, praised DeVos’ new guidelines.
“Under the previous administration, a single official at the U.S. Department of Education was issuing edicts, without the proper public input,” Alexander said.
DeVos’ new directive will narrow the cases that schools must investigate, as universities will only be required to look into accusations that have been made to proper authorities, as opposed to residential assistants or other figures.
“The department itself anticipates that four-year institutions will now investigate 32% fewer reports of sexual harassment and assault,” the ACLU press release read.
The department also slashed provisions that would have allowed schools to ignore sexual misconduct accusations that occurred off-campus, stating that schools would be obliged to investigate reports of misconduct that occur “in a building owned or controlled by a student organization that is officially recognized by a postsecondary institution.” These rules do not extend to students who are studying off-campus or abroad.
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