We may never know exactly what happened on a October 2024 night in a Cornell University fraternity house, but we should be thankful that the factual disputes and criminal liability will be sorted out in criminal court. We should also be thankful that when the university first investigated the incident in 2024, all parties were given notice of what they had been accused of and an opportunity to respond.
Successive Democratic administrations have tried to short-circuit that due process, and the Trump administration has now twice restored justice to college campuses. Hopefully, Democrats will stop using Title IX as a cudgel in the culture war.
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The push to turn campus administrators into the Gestapo began with a “Dear Colleague” letter from President Barack Obama’s Education Department in 2011. Despite the fact that rape and sexual assault against females had declined substantially since 1995 and remained statistically unchanged through 2010, the administration pressured colleges to overhaul how they investigated and adjudicated sexual assault allegations.
The Obama “Dear Colleague” letter informed schools that they would lose their federal funding unless they abandoned the criminal code’s “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard when handling sex-related allegations and instead used a “preponderance of the evidence” standard.
The letter also strongly discouraged allowing students to cross-examine each other directly and did not require that defendants be given notice that they were under investigation or be allowed to present evidence that they were wrongly accused. The result was a system in which students could face suspension, expulsion, and lasting damage to their reputations without a fair opportunity to defend themselves.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s 2020 Title IX regulation restored basic safeguards to campus proceedings. Colleges had to provide written notice of the allegations, with enough detail and time for accused students to prepare before an initial interview. Both sides had equal opportunities to present witnesses and evidence. They and their advisers could inspect evidence directly related to the allegations, including material the college did not intend to rely upon, and had at least 10 days to respond before the investigative report was completed.
Both parties also received that report at least 10 days before a hearing, giving them another opportunity to identify omissions and challenge conclusions. Colleges were required to hold live hearings, allow advisers for both sides to question witnesses, and entrust the final decision to someone other than the investigator or Title IX coordinator. These protections did not guarantee any particular outcome. They required colleges to hear both sides and test the evidence before imposing potentially life-altering punishment.
President Joe Biden then, of course, sought to undo the commonsense reforms, issuing regulations in April 2024 that instructed schools to revert to the old Obama rule book. These rules were blocked in federal court, and schools have been operating under the Trump Title IX regulations ever since.
The new Trump rule issued this week “clears the Biden administration’s illegal rewrite of the Title IX from the Code of Federal Regulations and restores the commonsense language promulgated in the first Trump administration,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon explained.
In addition to restoring due process to college campuses, the new rule also undoes Biden administration efforts to force students, staff, and faculty to falsely affirm preferred gender identities. The Biden regulations would have made it a violation of federal law to call a biological man a man. The Trump regulation allows students and faculty to speak the truth.
SANCTUARY DEMOCRATS ARE PUTTING AMERICANS LAST
Sexual assault allegations demand serious investigation, and accused students deserve a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves. A fair process helps establish the truth and gives its conclusions credibility. The same respect for individual rights should protect students and faculty from being compelled to affirm beliefs about gender identity they do not share.
Title IX should safeguard access to education while respecting due process and free speech. The Trump administration is right to preserve both. Democrats should recognize that civil rights belong to everyone, not just those whose claims advance their political agenda.
