PR: SAVE Files Amicus Brief Against 18 Attorneys’ General, In Support of New Title IX Regulation

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

SAVE Files Amicus Brief Against 18 Attorneys’ General, In Support of New Title IX Regulation

WASHINGTON / July 10, 2020 – SAVE filed an Amicus Brief yesterday in support of the recently released Title IX regulation, which seeks to restore fairness and due process in campus sexual harassment cases. The Amicus Brief highlights the legal inadequacies of the attorneys’ general Complaint, and urges that the Court dismiss their request for a preliminary injunction.

In 2011 the Department of Education issued a “Dear Colleague Letter” that imposed a range of new campus adjudication procedures for sexual assault cases. These changes removed a number of due process protections, such as the right of parties to be represented by counsel. As a result, hundreds of lawsuits were filed against colleges (1). Amidst intense public pressure, the Department of Education revoked its notorious Dear Colleague Letter in 2017, and later issued a new regulation on May 6, 2020. (2)

One month later, the attorneys’ general from 18 states filed a lawsuit seeking to block the long-awaited regulation. The lawsuit claimed the new regulation will “reverse decades of effort to end the corrosive effects of sexual harassment on equal access to education.” (3)

In response, the SAVE Brief highlights that Title IX “is not limited to the protection of one sex or gender; it protects all.” (page 9) This contrasts with the assertion by the California Women’s Law Center Amicus that states Title IX only serves to protect “women and girls.” (page 8).

The SAVE Brief enumerates the types of sex-based discrimination against male students: Biased educational materials; inconsistent enforcement of policies for male and female students; and a double-standard for intoxication policies. (pages 10-16).

The Brief also provides examples of universities that refused to investigate allegations by male students claiming to be victims of female-perpetrated sexual assault. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, each year 1.7 million men are sexually “made to penetrate,” compared to 1.5 million women who are raped (4).

Noting the hundreds of lawsuits filed against colleges, the SAVE Brief reaches a resounding conclusion:

“This demonstrates a simple truth: male students constitute the overwhelming majority of victims of proceedings on campus that are unlawful and constitute discrimination on the basis of sex, in violation of Title IX. Plaintiffs totally ignore this truth in their Complaint and subsequent Motion for Preliminary Injunction. This is especially astounding given that the deprivation of students’ rights in the disciplinary process,…was a substantial predicate for the issuance of the Regulation.” (pages 9-10)

The SAVE Amicus Brief is available online (5).

Links:

News and Commentary