One week after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced her department is changing controversial Title IX guidelines implemented under the Obama administration, 28 Democratic senators sent her a letter criticizing that decision.
The letter, sent Thursday, was signed by more than 60 percent of Democrats in the upper chamber, including prominent members such as Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders added his support as well, bringing the total number of signatories to 29.
The senators urged DeVos to leave Obama-era guidelines in place, arguing “[t]he current guidance is critical to ensuring that schools understand and take seriously their responsibilities under the law.”
“Rescinding the guidance,” they claimed, “would be a step in the wrong direction in addressing the national epidemic of campus sexual assault.”
The senators also slammed DeVos for what they argued were confusing signals from her department regarding which guidelines are currently in place. “This shows neither a dedication to a fully transparent process including robust stakeholder engagement, nor a commitment to supporting survivors in obtaining justice and ensuring they are safe on campus,” said the letter. Putting out a temporary guidance, the senators asserted, would confuse schools and students who are “wondering if the Department will continue to protect and enforce their rights under Title IX.”
That’s a strange argument from the very people defending policies that were often issued in the form of “Dear Colleague” letters with ambiguous legal standing in order to circumvent the requisite notice-and-comment process.
The Obama administration’s guidances created chaos on campuses that eroded students’ due process rights — a sad reality that even many people outside of conservative circles were forced to acknowledge.
Look no further than Emily Yoffe’s illuminating three-part series in The Atlantic published last week for proof of the Obama-era guidelines’ incontrovertible failure. In the Washington Post, Ruth Marcus wrote, “you don’t have to be a DeVos-like conservative to have serious qualms about the existing approach.”
Unfortunately, these senators are fighting to maintain an unacceptable status quo that has produced mass confusion, sprawling bureaucracies, a surfeit of lawsuits, extrajudicial sex courts, and tragic miscarriages of justice for both survivors and the falsely accused. Given the obvious failure of the previous administration’s guidelines, their decision to defend this failed system feels more like an opportunistic, partisan whack to please Democrats’ anti-DeVos base than an effort to ensure justice is carried out on our nation’s campuses.
Let’s hope the secretary doesn’t heed this sad call for more of the same.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
