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.