Biden Title IX Take Over Threatens Due Process, The Most Fundamental Legal Right
Teresa R. Manning
Policy Director, National Association of Scholars
Hello everyone. My name is Teresa R. Manning, Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars & author of its 2020 Report, Dear Colleague: The Weaponization of Title IX, which advocates fundamental fairness in education, also known as DUE PROCESS.
DUE PROCESS refers to the “basket of rights” that protects ALL of us, especially in our legal system. These rights particularly protect the lone individual up against powerful institutions like GOVERNMENT and SCHOOLS.
DUE PROCESS includes the presumption of innocence, the right to see evidence and the right to impartial decision-makers.
DUE PROCESS is probably the most important legal development EVER.
It ensures that legal hearings are not witch trials, not star chambers, and not kangaroo courts. It is the jewel in the crown of Western law.
But DUE PROCESS is now under attack by the Biden Education Department.
Biden’s proposed Title IX Rule to govern sex discrimination complaints in schools, including allegations of sexual misconduct, would return to the bad old days of the “single investigator” INQUISITION, where one school official holds “individual meetings” to decide guilt or innocence instead of a formal hearing with due process protections like cross examination & the right to submit & refute evidence.
My 2020 Dear Colleague Report found that school officials are not only overwhelmingly ideological, with backgrounds in things like “women’s studies, but they have virtually no courtroom experience where due process protections are put into practice.
This means that Title IX officials don’t really know due process, understand due process or value due process.
These ideologues are not just in the Title IX office; they basically run American higher education. They’re angry at biological realities like the differences between men and women and the more serious consequences of sexual relations for women. So they are waging war on biological reality: They attack sex roles and they attack men – with campus kangaroo courts where innocent male students are branded sex offenders because basic due process, including the right to defend oneself, was lacking.
Fortunately, real courts have pushed back on this Title IX totalitarianism: Hundreds of courts have ruled against schools and in favor of the wrongly accused under Title IX.
A SHOW DOWN IS COMING BETWEEN THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION & THE COURTS
Courts are insisting that schools observe due process, including the right to impartial decision makers, something Bident’s “individual meeting” INQUISITION method lacks.
The Biden people are not only ignoring this case law but they are also ignoring case law on how to define sexual harassment that triggers Title IX, as well as case law on the limits of agency action.
The 1999 Supreme Court decision of Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education insists that sexual misconduct be “severe, pervasive & objectively offensive” such that educational access is denied, to trigger Title IX. But the Biden proposal defies the Davis case, expanding the definition of sexual harassment to include “subjective evaluation” of conduct, which eviscerates the Supreme Court’s required objective standard.
The Supreme Court also just found that executive agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency – or the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights! – cannot hide behind redefinitions to decide “major questions” making policy, a function that falls only to Congress.
Yet that is precisely what the Biden people are doing in Title IX, by expansively re-defining not just sexual harassment but the word “sex” itself to include gender ideology and same sex orientation.
THIS ACTIVIST, AGENCY OVERREACH & ATTACK ON DUE PROCESS WILL NOT STAND.
The National Association of Scholars stands with the 140 organizations opposed to Biden’s Title IX Takeover as well as with the 15 state attorneys general who are right now suing the Biden people for their lawlessness. We urge everyone to HELP PROTECT DUE PROCESS: OPPOSE BIDEN’S PROPOSED TITLE IX RULE.
Public Comments can be made here.
Note: This presentation was made at the Stop the Title IX Take-Over rally on August 11.