We finally have the lawsuit that could break one of the worst parts of Title IX

From Hotair:

We’ve covered far too many stories of the “campus rape culture” here and the frequent miscarriages of justice ( on both sides) which result when colleges attempt to replace the judicial system when dealing with potential felonies taking place on their property. It’s generally depressing news, even in the rare cases a court is dragged in to correct the outcome. Now, however, Robby Soave at Reason Magazine brings us news that a lawsuit is underway which might put an end to these problems. One former student who was banned from campus at the University of Virginia amid allegations of sexual abuse without ever seeing a judge or jury is going to court, not against the University which hijacked the legal system, but against the US Department of Education.

A University of Virginia law student who was accused of sexual misconduct and banned from campus—years after the alleged incident—is suing the U.S. Education Department for giving UVA no choice but to rule against him.

His lawsuit is a direct challenge to the legality of the campus kangaroo courts the federal government claims are required under Title IX. Lawyers representing the student, John Doe, argue persuasively that he would have been found innocent of wrongdoing if not for the Obama administration’s insistence that universities adjudicate sexual assault under the preponderance of evidence standard.

This makes Doe’s lawsuit the strongest legal assault on Title IX to date. If successful, it could undo some of the damage wrought by OCR’s crusade to remove elements of due process from campus rape trials.

The reason this is an important case is described in full by Soave but it boils down to the fact that this is the first significant instance where the plaintiff (listed as John Doe in this case) is not going after the university for violating his rights, but after the Department of Education for creating the problem in the first place. Under a new interpretation of Title IX during the Obama administration applying to the section forbidding gender discrimination, colleges are instructed to use the lowest standard of proof – preponderance of evidence – when determining if a student is guilty of some form of sexual assault. Doe’s case was a sketchy one at best, as described in the Reason article, and the former state supreme court justice who heard the case for the university concluded that she was forced to admit there might have been a 51% chance that Doe was guilty. Doe was also forbidden any normal semblance of defense or the ability to cross examine during the proceedings. She stated that had the case been subject to the normal standard of evidence for a criminal case she would likely not have been able to find him guilty.

I hope the UVA student crushes them

Law profs slam Education Dept for end run on campus sexual assault guidelines.

From Ashe Schow at The Washington Examiner via H/T at Instapundit:

A group of 21 law professors, including Elizabeth Bartholet and Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law, penned a letter to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights objecting to its overreach under President Obama on the issue of campus sexual assault.

The professors criticized the way OCR is now compelling schools to ignore due process and punished the accused, all the while claiming the new regulations for schools are merely “guidance” and need not be adopted according to the steps outlined in the Administrative Procedure Act. The APA requires, among other things, a notice and comment period for new regulations.

OCR maintains they did not adopt any substantive changes in the documents, even though schools are suddenly being threatened with a loss of funding and an investigation if they don’t comply.

“OCR needs to clarify which directives it considers to be guidance documents vs. regulations,” the professors wrote. “Directives that are guidance documents need to be revised to eliminate provisions containing obligatory wording, unless these provisions are expressly supported by prior legislation or regulation. Directives that are deemed to be regulations need to be brought into compliance with requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.”

They’ll never put these out for notice-and-comment because the comments they get will be overwhelmingly negative, and correct.

Because they aren't interested in following the law, just fundamentally changing it, administratively.

New Lawsuit Could Totally Destroy Obama’s Sexual Assault Crusade

From The Daily Caller:

A former Colorado State University-Pueblo (CSUP) launched a daring lawsuit against the Obama administration Tuesday, claiming illegal Department of Education policies resulted in him being kicked out of school for sexual assault, despite an incredibly weak case against him.

Grant Neal, a student-athlete at CSUP, claims in his lawsuit that he is the victim of an almost preposterous railroading by the collegiate sex police, reports The Denver Post. Many men have claimed they were wrongfully convicted thanks to a “he said, she said” situation where a girl’s accusation without any further evidence was enough to get them kicked out. But in Neal’s case, his alleged victim actually consistently denied ever being raped.

So aren't we supposed to believe the victim? Oh wait, there isn't a victim.

Read the article about the case at Reason.

Congress May Finally Fight Obama’s Campus Sexual Assault Policies

From The Daily Caller:

The Department of Education is defending a series of regulations it has imposed on American colleges and universities by claiming, in the face of substantial evidence, that they really aren’t regulations at all. Now, its defiance is setting up a potential clash with Congress.

Under the Obama administration, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has used an 11-page “Dear Colleague” letter from 2011 to aggressively dictate how colleges handle sexual assault and sexual harassment on campus. The “Dear Colleague” letter draws authority from the federal Title IX law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, and lays down very specific requirements. For example, colleges are now required to adjudicate sexual assault allegations using a low “preponderance of the evidence” burden of proof and required to use a very broad definition of harassment.
.......................

A source close to Lankford’s office indicated to The Daily Caller News Foundation that Lhamon’s answer was far from satisfactory, and said a congressional hearing about OCR’s alleged overreach could be in the near future. If that happens, there could be a long-delayed clash between congressional Republicans and the Obama administration on the topic of campus sexual assault and possible overreach by the administration’s regulators.

Finally!

LSU Professor’s Lawsuit Could Undermine Major Obama Title IX Policy

From The Daily Caller:

A fired Louisiana State University (LSU) professor has filed a lawsuit that could gut the Obama administration’s controversial guidelines on what constitutes campus sexual harassment.

Teresa Buchanan, a tenured education professor, was fired by LSU in June 2015, roughly a year after school officials claimed that unspecified “inappropriate comments” she had made in the classroom violated the school’s sexual harassment policy. Colleges are obliged to punish sexual harassment under the federal government’s Title IX law, which allows for schools to lose all federal funding if they are found to have created or tolerated a hostile sexual environment on campus.
..........

But Buchanan’s lawsuit is about more than her job or her personal freedom of speech. It also threatens to bring down a major part of President Obama’s Title IX policy.

As noted by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which is supporting Buchanan’s lawsuit, the sexual harassment definition LSU used to fire Buchanan uses language identical to one the Department of Education has urged U.S. colleges to adopt since 2013. The definition classifies sexual harassment as any “unwelcome verbal, visual, or physical behavior of a sexual nature.”

FIRE argues that the department’s definition is “breathtakingly broad” and amounts to an effort to force unconstitutional speech codes onto any college receiving federal money. Just about any speech of a remotely sexual nature, the group argues, could potentially be treated as harassment.

When defending its decision to fire Buchanan, LSU has explicitly claimed it is only following the guidance of the Department of Education.

Punch back twice as hard.

The New Standard for Campus Sexual Assault -- Guilty until Proven Innocent

From The National Review:

Barack Obama and his appointees adopted a radically different approach. In April 2011, the OCR sent college administrators a 19-page “Dear Colleague” letter that ordered colleges and universities that receive federal funds (as almost all do) to change their disciplinary procedures regarding sexual assault. Each of the required changes — reducing the burden of proof in campus sex cases (and only in those cases) from “clear and convincing evidence” to “preponderance of the evidence,” introducing a form of double jeopardy by allowing accusers to appeal not-guilty findings, and demanding accelerated investigations that hamper the ability of accused students to gather evidence to defend themselves — increased the likelihood of guilty findings.

Worst of all, the letter “strongly” discouraged institutions from allowing an accused student to cross-examine his accuser. And a 2014 missive from the OCR threatened schools that allow such cross-examination — “the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth,” as the Supreme Court has repeatedly called it — with a charge of “perpetuat[ing] a hostile environment,” which is illegal.

Yet another example of executive overreach.

Feminist Teacher's Lesson Plan -- Discriminate against Boys

From The American Thinker Blog:

Reported recently was that Keller, a kindergarten "teacher" at Captain Johnston Blakely Elementary in Bainbridge Island, Wash., was refusing to let the boys in her class play with Legos during free play time. As the Bainbridge Island Review (BIR) wrote:

In Karen Keller's kindergarten classroom, boys can't play with Legos.

They can have their pick of Tinkertoys and marble tracks, but the colorful bricks are "girls only."

"I always tell the boys, 'You're going to have a turn' — and I'm like, 'Yeah, when hell freezes over' in my head," she said. "I tell them, 'You'll have a turn' because I don't want them to feel bad."

If you're acquainted with the mental illness masquerading as teaching philosophy today, you can imagine this woman's problem.

This woman needs to be sued under Title IX. That would be entertaining.

The unilateral war on college men

From USA Today by Glenn Harlan Reynolds via H/T at Instapundit:

Spearheading this effort has been Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon, who has characterized the letter as binding on colleges and universities even though it is not a law, was not adopted as a formal or informal rule making after notice and comment under any law, and appears to have very little to do with the federal anti-discrimination law Title IX, which says only that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

An assistant secretary of education thinks she can rewrite rape law by writing a letter.

Another example of the Executive Branch overreaching ......

Title Nein from Outer Space

From Powerline Blog:

The problem with nearly every government program or regulation is that it spawns a private sector industry to leech off the regulation, as well as a new constituency group to support the perpetuation or expansion of the regime.

Today’s example is the egregious Title IX sexual assault protocols for college campuses, which, as noted here previously, isn’t even a formal federal regulation. It proceeded from a “dear colleague” “guidance” letter from the Department of Education—an example of what legal scholars call the growing practice of “informal rule-making.” It may seem informal to you, but when you’re on the receiving end, with the threats and blandishments of the federal government coming at you, it seems about as “informal” as a request from Don Corleone.

The Title IX campus rules would never survive a the formal regulatory rule-making process under the Administrative Procedure Act, but the DOE’s “guidance” letter was enough to generate the Association of Title IX Administrators, which exists to offer expert guidance to college administrators everywhere.

Title IX is being used by the Feminist Grievance Collective to take revenge against men.

The Hunt for a Good Bad Guy

From Taki's Magazine via H/T from Instapundit:

There is a severe rape drought going on in the West; not the violent sexual assault as is broadly defined by the law but a particular kind of rape. We want wealthy white males with blond hair high-fiving each other as they torture some poor girl who was just trying to get an education. The Middle East is resplendent with these scenarios, but the guy usually has a funny hat on instead of Richie Rich hair.
..........................


There is a lot of currency behind the Duke lacrosse rapist ideal. Through Title IX, the government offers financial rewards to schools for digging up sexual offenders in varsity jackets. Rapists give feminists something to fight for in a culture where women have little to complain about. This means when a woman lies about frat boys, or carries a mattress around, or simply says someone resembles a rapist, the ax falls hard.
..........................

Which brings me to this week’s rape de semaine. Daryush Valizadeh is a “pickup artist” (a.k.a. PUA) who spares us his ridiculous foreign name by using the moniker Roosh V. He tours the world giving small groups of men simple tips such as: Get in shape, be interesting, start the conversation simple, etc. As far as I’m concerned he’s a hippie love guru trying to rebuild the male-female relationship after decades of sabotage. We live in a stifled environment where groups of men have entirely given up on women and replaced them with porn. They call it a “sexodus” and groups such as MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) are “Refusing to bow, serve and kneel for the opportunity to be treated like a disposable utility.” This isn’t good for the human race. As Joe Strummer used to say, “Without people, you’re nothing.”

Encouraging traditional gender roles is a dangerous trend for the rape alarmists. So when Roosh announced he was doing talks in Toronto and Montreal this week, the feminazis committed to shut it down. They cited an article he wrote back in February called “How to Stop Rape” wherein he said we should “make rape legal if done on private property.” His point being women would be a lot less heedless about inviting men over and false accusations would also end if this amendment came to pass. His proposal was about as serious as one of Jonathan Swift’s, but the message is correct. Women have such hubris these days that they are endangering themselves. Getting wasted in public is reckless for a woman no matter how much we “teach men not to rape.” Passing out on a crowded beach may not be asking for it, but it’s pretty close. This is what an intellectual discussion does. It posits an outlandish hypothesis that provokes you into confronting a dark truth. He could have said, “If we forbade black men from ever being around white women, rape cases would plummet.” This is an impossible scenario no sane person would want to implement, but it’s also a great way to showcase the shocking statistics behind interracial rape.

The last thing feminism can tolerate is men REFUSING to bow down.

Cheers to Roosh giving them the flutters and read the whole thing.

The state of the campus sexual assault litigation crisis

From Instapundit:

IT’S ANNOYINGLY UN-LINKABLE, but this emailed press release from George Washington University Law Prof. John Banzhaf summarizes the state of the campus sexual assault litigation crisis:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 9, 2014): Colleges being asked by U.S. Senator Claire McCaskil how they deal with allegations of rape and sexual assault are being advised by attorneys to “lawyer up,” while more male students found guilty of rape or sexual assault by their universities are bringing law suits – almost a dozen of which have already been successful – charging that the institutions badly “screwed up” both the investigations and the campus hearings, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

In a slide show of legal advice prepared by lawyers for member universities of the American Council on Education [ACE] which received the inquiries, universities were warned about responding to the survey about rape and sexual assault because it could lead to “reputational harm,” “additional investigations” and “litigation,” and also cause “public relations risks.”

Lawyers reminded the universities, as they do large corporations accused of wrongdoing, that a congressional request for information “is not a subpoena”; that they can often duck by looking for an “opportunity to recast the questions”; and should be mindful of “what will play well on TV.”

ACE originally even refused McCaskil’s request for copies of slides used in a legal slide show to warn representatives of universities how to make their answers “bulletproof,” and provided the slides only once it became clear that copies had surfaced and were about to be published.

Reportedly, ACE is still refusing to tell the senator which institutions attended the “lawyer up” slide show. Meanwhile, colleges are facing a possibly more serious challenge as many male students found guilty of rape or sexual assault by their institutions are taking them to court and winning:

BROWN I – she didn’t remember the event, he said the sex was consensual, but was found guilty; was reported on TV as case of “When Yes Means No”; case settled by university

BROWN II – student charged the school interfered with his efforts to clear his name because of pressure from accuser’s father, an influential alum and a major donor; lawsuit settled by university

DENISON – accused passed lie detector test, was found guilty anyway by university, sued on ten different legal grounds including violation of rights; case settled by university

DUKE I – famous case involving lacrosse players, law suit charged conspiracy to fame players, and was settled by the university for an undisclosed amount

DUKE II – judge very recently prohibited university from expelling a student convicted of rape, because of alleged pressure on the campus tribunal to get tough on rapists

GEORGE WASHINGTON – was forced to settle a case where a former student sued the school for allegedly unfairly convicting him of sexual assault

HOLY CROSS – school policy held male responsible if both parties were drunk; university’s “responsible” finding was overturned; he was returned to school with no adverse mark on transcript

OCCIDENTAL – order of stay granted by the court when the student complained about improper procedures and definitions used in the campus proceeding which convicted him

SAINT JOSEPH – federal judge upheld lawsuit brought by male student against university, a university employee, and even the female complainant, under several novel legal theories

UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH – jury ruled university was negligent in a case that found a student guilty of sexual assault, saying that it did not follow its own published procedures

XAVIER – judge upheld a law suit, based upon many different legal theories, by a male student against his university which had earlier found him guilty of rape; university then settled

Also, late last week, in a case with some striking parallels, a military appeals court overturned a Marine’s rape and sexual assault convictions because of the unfairness of pressure to convict from higher ups; an allegation common to several students’ complaints

Meanwhile, law suits filed by students convicted by their universities of rape and/or sexual assault are pending against Bucknell, Cincinnati, Columbia, Delaware State, Depauw, Drew, Kenyon, U of Michigan, Philadelphia U, Swarthmore, Vassar, Williams, and perhaps others.

More such legal challenges are likely to be brought as pressure from the President, several federal agencies, women’s rights organizations, and individual women and groups on campus result in more findings of guilt where they may not be warranted by the facts and/or because the procedures used did not protect the accused student’s rights, says Banzhaf.

This may be especially true as the federal government pressures schools to convict, not where the evidence establishes proof beyond a reasonable doubt (the usual standard in rape cases) or even by clear and convincing evidence, but rather where the conclusion is based upon a mere preponderance of evidence.

This means that, in many “he said, she said” cases where there is no other corroborating evidence and the two students’ stories conflict, the campus tribunal just has to find her story a little bit more convincing than his to expel the male student and scar him for life, says Banzhaf, who has brought more than 100 successful legal proceedings charging sex discrimination against women.

Finding sexual assault by a mere preponderance of evidence may be appropriate where the consequence is a campus-wide restraining order, or a mandated move to another dorm or class to avoid facing the female complainant, but some higher standard may be required by law when the penalty, as in the Duke case, is expulsion plus loss of a diploma which he earned and is needed for his new job, says Banzhaf.

One major problem confronting prosecutions for date rape is that among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, only 17 explicitly prohibit rape involving penetration without consent. For example, in North Carolina, the home of Duke, a man is not guilty of rape when he simply sexually penetrates a female without her consent, providing that no force is used or threatened.

More specifically, in North Carolina, a male is guilty of first degree rape only if the intercourse is inflicted by “force and against the will of the other person,” whereas to constitute second degree rape, the defendant must have vaginal intercourse with someone who is “physically helpless.”
But North Carolina’s narrow definition of “physically helpless” – unconscious or unable to resist or communicate – may not include the all-too-familiar situation of a female university student whose ability to meaningfully consent may have been significantly impaired by alcohol, although she can still move, speak, and sometimes even exchange email or text messages, says Banzhaf.

Since so many date rape complaints allege that sex occurred without the female student’s consent, but without the use of force or the threat of force, prosecutions may not be successful, or are likely to be overturned on appeal, even if the victim’s testimony of the events which occurred is believed, says Banzhaf, who is working on new procedures to improve date rape proceedings.

As I’ve said before, if I were a plaintiff’s lawyer in a college town, I’d be running ads saying “Falsely accused of sexual assault on campus? Sue the b*st*rds!”

UPDATE: From the comments: “It is interesting that the list of colleges are mostly private, very expensive schools.” Yeah. Why would anyone pay top dollar to an institution that shows such disregard to its six-figure customers. The male ones, anyway.

Also: “Wow. Put together like that, it is a stunning list of misconduct by universities.” Yes, yes it is.

So will the Tobacco Lawyers go after these mostly private small colleges? How much fun would it be if they added a RICO charge, with the Federal Government as an unindicted co-conspirator?

Kangaroo Court Update - More on Vassar's Rigged Sex Hearing

From K.C. Johnson via Instapundit:

First: the idea that college procedures are wildly tilted against accusers--the basis of the myriad Title IX complaints filed against colleges and universities around the country--is divorced from reality. In the Vassar case, two witnesses that Yu requested be heard were not interviewed by Vassar and did not attend his hearing. Yu received Vassar's investigative file (what amounts to the "discovery" in the case) three days before the hearing--and, as with all Vassar students accused of sexual assault, he didn't have the right to counsel during the college proceedings. He confronted a panel of three faculty members, at the request of Walker, whose father teaches at Vassar. (That a panel confined to colleagues of the accused student's father might be biased does not appear to have troubled the Vassar administration.) Once found guilty, the appeals process was meaningless, since the tape of Yu's hearing was inaudible and the filing claims that Vassar never even gave Yu a copy of the written decision in the case before expelling him.

These one-sided procedures explain what appears to be a one-sided consideration of the evidence. To an even greater extent than the Harris case at St. Joe's, Yu appeared to possess highly exculpatory, written evidence--a series of Facebook messages from Walker that even Vassar's investigator (much later, when under oath) conceded contradicted Walker's version of events. In a passage that commentator Christina Hoff Sommers could use as Example A in her concerns about equating drunken, but consensual sex, with rape, Walker wrote to Yu, "I did not treat you very well, and it was disrespectful on my part to do what I did because I was drunk." ....................

Yet since Vassar (like most schools) holds that sex after a certain level of intoxication constitutes rape, how can the level of intoxication of both parties not be relevant? This would seem to be a Title IX issue of treating females differently than males.

It seems all but certain that in future years, lots of male students will suffer Yu's fate. Parents of future students would be well-served in taking a look at how Vassar treated him.

Six figures for a chance at being branded a rapist in a Kangaroo Court? Not much of a deal. But these procedures seem vulnerable to all sorts of lawsuits, not just limited to Title IX. At some schools they may rise to the level of conspiracies to deprive people of civil rights, and possibly even RICO violations.

I like the idea of bankrupting these schools. Money seems to be the only thing that drives their decisions, good (Federal Dollars) and bad (Lawsuit payouts).

Title IX Suit Filed Against University of Oregon On Behalf of Male Students.

From Instapundit:

WAVE OF THE FUTURE: Title IX Suit Filed Against University of Oregon On Behalf of Male Students.

Former Eugene City Councilor Kevin Hornbuckle has filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of three University of Oregon students who were kicked off the basketball team in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations.

Hornbuckle said he submitted his Title IX complaint against the UO on Monday through the website of the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education.
“The basic problem is that rape accusations are effectively forever,” Hornbuckle said Tuesday. “And the University of Oregon as well as the media have gravely harmed these three players, probably for the rest of their lives.”\ 

In failing to defend the three players, and by “publicly impugning their character and morals,” the UO administration “participated in generating a climate of hysteria,” Hornbuckle wrote in his complaint.

If this flies, a lot of schools will be at risk.

Just search Google for the "Duke Lacrosse Rape Case."

The Other Side of Title IX -- A warning to higher-education administrators.

From James Taranto of Opinion Journal:

Brett Sokolow, director of the Association of Title IX Administrators, has a warning for American college and university administrators: In their efforts to enforce Title IX, he argues, they are running afoul of Title IX.

Title IX is a provision of the Education Amendments of 1972 that stipulates: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." Under the Obama administration, the Education Department has interpreted this law as requiring colleges and universities to police sexual misconduct involving students, on or off campus, under the broad rubric of "sexual harassment . . . including sexual violence."

In a newsletter to members dated last Thursday, Sokolow reports that "in the last two weeks, I've worked on five cases all involving drunken hook-ups on college campuses. In each case, the male accused of sexual misconduct was found responsible. In each case, I thought the college got it completely wrong."

He does not reveal the names of the institutions involved or any other specific details of the cases, presumably because his consultative role entails a duty of confidentiality. But he sums up the problem as follows: "Some [disciplinary] boards and panels still can't tell the difference between drunken sex and a policy violation"--that is, a sexual assault.

Sometimes that is by design. "In a recent case," Sokolow recounts, "the campus policy stated that intoxication creates an inability to consent." That makes it easy to establish a violation--except that in many cases the accuser has violated the letter of the policy as much as the accused has. "If both are intoxicated, they both did the same thing to each other," Sokolow writes. "Why should only the male be charged if both students behave in ways defined as prohibited by the policy?"

It is part of the Feminist's campaign to make being male illegal. They want to make college campuses as hostile to men as possible. A reverse sexual discrimination for past discrimination. They want to make legitimate a sex based apartheid on the top campuses in the country.