In May, President Joe Biden announced he was naming controversial nominee Catherine Lhamon to retake her old Obama-era job as assistant secretary of education for the Office of Civil Rights. She is widely known and disparaged by critics for implementing the 2011 Title IX standards for investigating and adjudicating college sexual misconduct and assault cases.
Those standards deprived the accused of a bedrock principle of American jurisprudence: the right to cross-examine one’s accuser and the right to due process. After the implementation of those policies, hundreds of students, mostly male and many of them black who were found guilty in college tribunals, had their convictions undone in real courts of law.
President Donald Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy Devos, rescinded the Obama-era standards, but if Lhamon is confirmed by the Senate, many fear she will reinstate the flawed standards. Doug McKelway interviews defense attorney Justin Dillon, who has represented many falsely accused, about Lhamon’s nomination.
