On Thursday, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued a stark rebuke of Obama-era guidance that had directed the nation’s schools to actively investigate and prosecute campus sexual violence under Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination at federally-funded institutions.
“The era of ‘rule by letter,’ is over,” DeVos said, referring to a controversial “Dear Colleague” letter sent to America’s college and university presidents by the Obama Administration’s Office for Civil Rights in 2011. The letter threatened their institutions with loss of federal resources if they did not deploy an aggressive posture against campus sexual violence, including adopting a “preponderance of the evidence” rather than a “clear and convincing evidence” standard for the adjudication of sexual assault cases, as well as adopt elaborate procedures of their own outside of local law enforcement to investigate and prosecute Title IX-specific violations.
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