The letters issued in recent years by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on how colleges should investigate and adjudicate cases of sexual assault are effectively -- and illegally -- acting as binding regulations, a Republican senator argues in a letter sent to the department today.
In a sharply worded missive, Sen. James Lankford wrote that, while the department's two "Dear Colleague" letters on harassment and sexual violence sent to institutions in 2010 and 2011 “purport to merely interpret statements of existing law,” the letters actually enacted sweeping regulatory changes without first going through the required notice-and-comment procedures required by the Administrative Procedure Act.
The guidance, the senator argues, goes further than clarifying Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 -- it expands the gender discrimination law’s scope, increasing the liability for institutions dealing with bullying, harassment and sexual violence and relaxing the burden of proof institutions are required to use when adjudicating cases of sexual assault.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/07/senators-challenge-legality-us-guidance-campus-sexual-assault