The American Civil Liberties Union has, for decades, been a pillar of the Left. But the organization at least made an effort to position itself as a consistent defender of free speech, privacy, due process, and other freedoms. But in the latest partisan shift in an internal avalanche, the ACLU is now opposing efforts by the Trump administration to advance the cause of due process on college campuses. In doing so, it has abandoned any claim to being a principled defender of civil liberties and revealed itself as little more than a front group for the Democratic Party.
We previously endorsed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s new Title IX rules, released May 6, which were intended to restore fairness to campus sexual assault proceedings which had often descended into kangaroo courts under the Obama administration’s policies. As we noted then, the Trump administration’s changes protect victims and respect survivors while also ensuring that accused students have the right to cross-examine their accuser, aren’t subjected to a single investigator’s whims, and can have counsel by their side.
The rules also rightly redefine sexual harassment more narrowly, so as not to encapsulate everyday speech and behavior, and sensibly reset the parameters of what falls under the campus disciplinary system’s jurisdiction to only include incidents that occur on campus or at campus-related locations such as fraternities. Additionally, the policy allows schools to choose between using the low “by a preponderance” evidentiary standard (which the Obama administration mandated) and a higher (but still less than criminal) standard, “clear and convincing.”
These changes are fair, reasonable, and by all indications, entirely consistent with the ACLU’s stated values.
After all, the organization still claims that its “mission remains realizing the promise of the Bill of Rights for all” and that due process is “fair treatment by the government whenever the loss of your liberty or property is at stake.” Certainly, the Department of Education’s policies and the policies of federally funded universities would fall under that definition.
Yet sadly, the ACLU has put its liberal sympathies over its professed values and actually sued DeVos to try and block these pro-due-process reforms from their planned August implementation. It does not seem to oppose a few of the policy changes, such as the cross-examining mandate, but the organization specifically cites the redefinition of sexual harassment, change to the location-based determination of campus responsibility, and opportunity for schools to use a higher burden of proof as supposedly illegal policies it wants to resist to “fight for survivors.”
This might play well with major Democratic donors, but it is not in any way, shape, or form consistent with the principle of due process. The ACLU is, quite literally, suing the Department of Education because it wants to give schools the option to not expel students with only 51% certainty of guilt (a result the lower preponderance evidentially standard sometimes yields).
This unprincipled stance is not worthy of the ACLU, which historically defended the free speech rights of neo-Nazis and even recently stuck up for the due process rights of mentally ill gun owners.
Their standards shouldn’t change just because the Trump administration is involved. The ACLU no longer lives up to its name.
