Today, the Department of Education proposed new Title IX regulations that, if implemented, would gut essential free speech and due process rights for college students facing sexual misconduct allegations on campus. As required by federal law, the department must now solicit public feedback before the pending rules are finalized.
The draft regulations are a significant departure from current Title IX regulations. Unlike the current regulations, adopted in 2020 after 18 months of review, the new regulations would roll back student rights by:
- eliminating students’ right to a live hearings
- eliminating the right to cross-examination;
- weakening students’ right to active legal representation;
- allowing a single campus bureaucrat to serve as judge and jury;
- rejecting the Supreme Court’s definition of sexual harassment in favor of a definition that threatens free speech rights;
- requiring colleges and universities to use the weak “preponderance of the evidence” standard to determine guilt, unless they use a higher standard for other alleged misconduct.
- These changes authorize or require institutions to violate fundamental student and faculty civil liberties.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression will submit its formal objections to the proposed changes in the coming weeks. Moreover, FIRE is committed to using all the resources at its disposal to ensure that core American freedoms, such as a student’s rights to free speech and due process, are not abandoned by the federal government.
