HURRAY FOR SENATOR JAMES LANKFORD: This senator is NOT happy with govt’s response to overreach concerns.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., has been trying for months to get the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to justify it’s expansion of Title IX. When OCR finally responded (late), its justification was, let’s just say, lacking.
Now Lankford has written back, rejecting OCR’s justification and saying he was “unpersuaded” by its response letter.
“In my letter, I asked you to provide me with the statutory or regulatory language that the 2010 Dear Colleague letter on sexual harassment and bullying purports to interpret in cataloguing potentially prohibited conduct,” Lankford wrote. “Far from providing clarity, the 2010 letter obfuscates conduct constituting actionable sexual harassment under Title IX by including examples that ‘can’ violate Title IX.”
The “Dear Colleague” letters are allegedly “guidance” documents issued by OCR that don’t carry the force of law. The letters, however, threaten schools with a loss of federal funding and an investigation if they don’t comply.
OCR claimed it could expand what is covered under Title IX – a federal anti-gender discrimination statute – because the language was similar to that in past Dear Colleague letters. Lankford disagrees, writing that the language has been changed.
“Most significantly, you point to 2006’s Sexual Harassment: It’s Not Academic guidance pamphlet as developing the ‘same examples’ as the 2010 Dear Colleague letter,” Lankford wrote. “This is misleading, since the 2006 pamphlet made clear that such examples could not rise to an actionable Title IX violation without the presence of additional elements.”
Lankford also notes that none of the previous Dear Colleagues are supposed to carry the force and effect of law, so they cannot therefore “provide sufficient support to answer the question I posed in my January 7 letter: What statutory or regulatory authority do you construe to arrive at the conclusion that Title IX requires that this proscribed conduct ‘can’ be prohibited?”
Beyond sexual harassment and bullying, Lankford had requested justification for OCR’s sudden requirement that all schools use the low “preponderance of evidence” standard for deciding whether a student has committed sexual assault (a felony that leaves a lasting impact on a student who has been accused). The preponderance standard means an administrator has to be just 50.01 percent sure a student sexually assaulted his or her accuser, meaning that same administrator can be 49.99 percent sure the assault didn’t occur, and still brand someone a rapist.
Abolish OCR. Hell, repeal Title IX, since the feds can’t apply it as written, and universities aren’t willing to fight them.