The American Civil Liberties Union is trying its best to sully its name by fighting against due process protections on college campuses. Fortunately, the group’s most recent effort failed, as its lawsuit against the Department of Education was tossed out of court.
The ACLU’s efforts to undermine due process protections started in May, when Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rolled out new Title IX regulations on how universities handle sexual assault accusations. The new rules were a much needed corrective to the Obama Administration’s evisceration of due process protections with its 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter.
The ACLU was indignant when it filed its lawsuit, claiming that it supported due process, despite its years of silence on the Obama Administration’s rules. Instead, ACLU officials said they were suing because the new rules let universities “ignore any sexual harassment or assault that takes place off campus,” narrowed the definition of sexual harassment, and required more evidence than a “he said, she said” to punish the accused.
It was not true, of course, that universities could ignore all off-campus incidents. That correction was made before the rules were rolled out in May. The narrowed definition of sexual harassment to “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” was also a welcome change, one that would preclude “mundane speech that happened to involve gender or sex” as sexual harassment.
The new rules also allowed universities to raise the evidentiary standard for accusations from the “preponderance of the evidence” to the “clear and convincing” standard. The preponderance of the evidence amounts to a 51% chance that the actions took place, which the ACLU thinks is sufficient. The more than 150 students who defeated their schools in court after being wrongfully disciplined under that standard are apparently of no concern to a “civil liberties” union.
The ACLU has abandoned its stated mission in favor of left-wing posturing, and it is no more apparent than when it comes to the issue of due process. The only tragedy in the ACLU’s defeat is knowing it will enthusiastically cheer on the next Democratic administration as it rolls back these due process protections, and the ACLU will still pretend to care about civil liberties all the while.
