Biden Seeks to Undo Trump Administration’s Due Process Protections for College Students Accused of Sexual Assault

Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced last May that the Trump administration took action to strengthen Title IX to protect sexual assault victims and restore due process on college campuses.

Title IX of the federal code bars discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal funding. The law also protects the rights of individuals who are the victims of sexual assaults on campus and those accused of such assaults.

“Too many students have lost access to their education because their school inadequately responded when a student filed a complaint of sexual harassment or sexual assault,” said Secretary DeVos. “This new regulation requires schools to act in meaningful ways to support survivors of sexual misconduct, without sacrificing important safeguards to ensure a fair and transparent process. We can and must continue to fight sexual misconduct in our nation’s schools, and this rule makes certain that fight continues.” [emphasis added]

FIRE, an organization that advocates for the First Amendment rights of students and faculty members in the nation’s colleges and universities, said the changes were a victory for the rights of the accused and a repudiation of Barack Obama’s changes to Title IX, which weakened those rights. At the time, Joe Biden said that if elected president, he would reverse protections for the accused.

The Daily Wire reported this week that Biden is making his move. He signed an executive order that requires the Department of Education to review these and other changes to Title IX. An excerpt:

The Trump administration’s Title IX regulations ensured accused students were told the exact details of the allegations against them (many times they were only told they had been accused of sexual assault or given a date when the alleged offense occurred), provided access to all of the evidence being used against them by their school (accused students have often been barred from seeing this evidence or given an hour or two to review it in a supervised room and only allowed to take whatever notes they could), and the ability to cross-examine the evidence and witnesses against them.

What rational reason does Biden have to “review” the previous administration’s executive action to strengthen Title IX protections for the accused? Aren’t leftists concerned about protecting the rights of both sexual assault victims and their accusers?

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore (Creative Commons) – Some rights reserved