{"id":8189,"date":"2020-06-12T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T16:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:10028\/uncategorized\/title-ix-changes-college-sexual-misconduct-procedures\/"},"modified":"2024-05-02T14:22:20","modified_gmt":"2024-05-02T18:22:20","slug":"title-ix-changes-college-sexual-misconduct-procedures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/article\/title-ix-changes-college-sexual-misconduct-procedures\/","title":{"rendered":"Title IX Changes College Sexual Misconduct Procedures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The U.S Department of Education recently announced new changes in how colleges are to handle sexual assault and sexual harassment complaints.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These changes to Title IX, the federal regulation on college gender discrimination and sexual misconduct, will take effect on August 14, 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although the new revisions, called the \u201cFinal Rule,\u201d attempt to make processes fair and unbiased for all parties involved in a <a class=\"wpil_keyword_link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/practice-areas\/sexual-assault\/\"   title=\"sexual harassment\" data-wpil-keyword-link=\"linked\">sexual harassment<\/a> or sexual assault claim, there is resistance against them. Advocates complain that these regulations seemingly provide more protection for the accused students and employees rather than the victims.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New Changes to Title IX<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, the new changes strive to ensure due process rights for both students reporting sexual misconduct and those accused.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The changes decrease the number of complaints colleges will be required to investigate by limiting investigations to only for extremely severe behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Several provisions introduced include the following changes:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Colleges have some leeway in choosing what violates campus policy. Previously, colleges were instructed to use a \u201cpreponderance of evidence\u201d in cases of accused sexual assault, which would assume that the assault was more likely than not, but Final Rule changes give institutions the option of requiring \u201cclear and convincing\u201d evidence to prove a claim;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More involvement is now required than the previously accepted single investigator. This ensures that a hearing takes place before an outcome is decided;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Colleges are expected to investigate those off-campus sexual misconducts that take place in college-owned buildings or college-sponsored trips. These can sometimes include fraternity houses if they are recognized as such by the institution itself;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Live hearings and cross-examinations in sexual misconduct cases is now allowed. Students will not be able to cross-examine each other personally, and colleges will have to ensure that both parties have an adviser; and<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sexual harassment is specifically defined to include sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking, as unlawful discrimination on the basis of sex.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Controversy<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is a lot of controversy around these new rules and how they will be implemented when they officially go into effect on August 14, 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The changes made to Title IX mean that victims of potential sexual misconduct may risk not being given the justice they deserve. This is simply because they do not meet the new definition of sexual misconduct, which is narrower and can only be investigated in severe cases.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The U.S Department of Education introduced these rules in order to seek equality for all students and to ensure that accused parties are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Since the Obama administration put pressure on colleges to crack down on sexual misconduct cases in 2011, there have been a slew of civil lawsuits filed by students accused of sexual misconduct claiming their cases were unjustly handled.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The rules also gives both parties in a Title IX proceeding the right to appeal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The changes appear designed to limit or discourage sexual misconduct claims.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It can be very traumatic for a victim of sexual assault to come forward. Under these new regulations, victims would have to relive these traumas under cross-examinations from their attackers\u2019 representatives. Furthermore, the regulations that have been introduced will allow colleges to require a higher level of evidence, making it more difficult for victims to succeed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The cross-examination element of the case is something that was discouraged by the Obama administration for fear that it could dissuade victims from coming forward. Critics of the new rules also point out that some victims might not be able to afford a lawyer, meaning that potentially, guilty individuals with enough money to hire a lawyer could have an advantage over victims.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Reality of Sexual Assault Reporting<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sexual assault cases are historically underreported for fear of repercussions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of note, the number of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nsvrc.org\/sites\/default\/files\/2012-03\/Publications_NSVRC_Overview_False-Reporting.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">false accusations<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is in reality extremely low, somewhere between 2% and 10%, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Additionally, they note that these numbers are almost certainly inflated due to inconsistent definitions and regulations\u2014for example, labeling a claim as \u201cfalse\u201d due to lack of sufficient evidence instead of necessarily being proven untrue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The balance between giving every individual presumed innocence until proven guilty and giving justice to victims of hard-to-prove sexual misconduct crimes will always be difficult. But despite these new changes to Title IX, sexual assault victims do have legal options should they wish to come forward.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For a free, confidential consultation with an experienced <\/span><a href=\"\/contact-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">civil litigation attorney<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, contact Napoli Shkolnik .<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S Department of Education recently announced new changes in how colleges are to handle sexual assault and sexual harassment complaints. These changes to Title IX, the federal regulation on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8190,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civil-rights"],"acf":[],"page_builder_type":"gutenberg","gutenberg_data":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17669,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8189\/revisions\/17669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napolilaw.lemonadestand.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}