Category: Legal

‘Naked attempt to strong-arm our schools:’ Five Lawsuits Seek to Block Sweeping Title IX Rule

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date May 5, 2024

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Hain: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

‘Naked attempt to strong-arm our schools:’ Five Lawsuits Seek to Block Sweeping Title IX Rule

WASHINGTON / May 6, 2024 – It’s not often that a new federal regulation triggers such revulsion that five lawsuits are filed within days of its release. On April 19 the Department of Education issued its long-awaited Title IX regulation, which redefines sex to include “gender identity” (1). Within 11 days, five complaints against the new policy had been filed in federal courts by the following groups:

States of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, and the Independent Women’s Law Center, Independent Women’s Network, Parents Defending Education, and Speech First (2)
States of Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and West Virginia (3)
States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho (4)
State of Texas (5)
Rapides Parish (Louisiana) School Board (6)

All of the lawsuits contend the new regulation exceeds the Department of Education’s legal authority, and violates the Administrative Procedure Act because its provisions are arbitrary and capricious.

The lawsuit from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, the most comprehensive of the five, charges the new regulation not only promotes harmful gender transitioning among underage students, but also impairs free speech, parental rights, bathroom privacy, women’s sports, and due process for the falsely accused.

The lawsuit from the Attorneys General of Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho charges the Title IX rule is a “naked attempt to strong-arm our schools into molding our children … in the government’s preferred image of how a child should think, act, and speak” (3) — an accusation that recalls the Communist Party’s earlier crusade to mold an obedient “New Soviet Man” (7).

The lawsuit from the Rapides Parish School Board documents the myriad policy changes that schools would be required to make. The complaint states defiantly, “The school board does not have and does not intend to adopt a policy mandating that staff or students use pronouns that reflect students’ perceived gender identity when doing so is inconsistent with a student’s sex.”

Indeed, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill commented, “This is all for a political agenda, ignoring significant safety concerns for young women students in preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities across Louisiana and the entire country” (8).

The new – some would say, revolutionary – Title IX policy accords with the Marxist vision to bring about a “sexless” society. In the words of Shulamith Firestone, the end goal of feminist revolution must be the elimination of the “sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally…The tyranny of the biological family would be broken” (9).

In addition, the governors of Arkansas (10) and Nebraska (11) ordered their schools to ignore the new Title IX policy. The previous week, similar directives had been issued in Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina (12).

The new regulation will impose sweeping changes on our nation’s schools. Brett Sokolow, head of the Association for Title IX Administrators, predicts that “60-70% of what we have in place now will need to change in some way to comply with the new Rule” (13).

Which means dramatically increased budgets and institutional clout for the highly politicized Title IX offices across the nation.

Links:

Campus Civil Rights DED Sexual Assault Directive Department of Education Legal Office for Civil Rights Press Release Scholarships Sex Stereotyping Sexual Assault Title IX

DEI Programs Must be Eliminated to Reverse Declining Numbers of College Men

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date March 7, 2024

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Hain: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

DEI Programs Must be Eliminated to Reverse Declining Numbers of College Men

WASHINGTON / March 11, 2024 – A shocking new report was issued last week that documents 12 areas in which globally, men and boys are lagging behind women (1). These areas include education, health, homelessness, unfair treatment by the legal system, and more. In American colleges, for example, men now comprise only 42% of all undergraduate students (2).

Observers implicate a climate of anti-male hostility at college campuses (3), which can be traced to several developments in recent decades:

In 1979, the Department of Education issued a new Title IX policy on women’s sports that served to eliminate many male sports teams (4).
In 2011, the Obama Administration’s Dear Colleague Letter served to stereotype men as sexual predators (5). (Ironically, the Centers for Disease Control reports that men are victims of sexual assault by females nearly as often as women who are victims of rape (6)).
A growing number of women’s studies programs that promote Marxist-inspired theories of “patriarchal oppression” (7).
Hundreds of universities sponsor female-only scholarships and leadership programs (8).

Adding to the onslaught, colleges began to develop “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) programs in the latter part of the 2010s that granted preferences to Blacks and women. Among the 10 most highly paid DEI administrators at Ohio State University, for example, nine were female (9).

Viewing DEI programs as a “mortal threat to the American way of life” (10), nine states already have enacted laws to rein in DEI programs: Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah (11). These laws seek to prohibit colleges from having DEI offices or staff, ban mandatory diversity training, forbid the use of diversity statements in hiring and promotions, and bar colleges from considering race, sex, or national origin in admissions or employment (12).

These efforts were given a boost last June by the Supreme Court decision against Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, in which the SCOTUS ruled that considering a student’s race violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (13).

In theory, DEI programs and Title IX have opposite goals. While DEI seeks to afford preferences to women, Title IX seeks to end sex discrimination against men.

But in practice, the DEI mindset has infiltrated many Title IX offices. For example, the Association of Title IX Administrators, known as ATIXA, sponsored a conference on “True Equity at the Intersection of Title IX and DEI” (14). In its list of groups affected by “Inequitable Practices,” the program lists Students of Color, LGBTQIA+, and Women. But the fact that beleaguered men are facing an increasingly hostile environment somehow escaped the notice of ATIXA.

As a result, we are seeing cases like the Title IX investigator at the University of Maryland who endorsed a sexist Facebook quote by William Golding that said, “I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been” (15).

If lawmakers want to assure the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not relegated to the dustbin of history, they need to move swiftly to ban Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at colleges in their state.

Citations:

Campus Civil Rights Department of Education Due Process Legal Office for Civil Rights Sexual Assault Title IX

The Due Process Provisions of the 2020 Title IX Regulations Were Successful. We Should Fight to Keep Them.

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date March 1, 2024

The Due Process Provisions of the 2020 Title IX Regulations Were Successful. We Should Fight to Keep Them.

Jonathan Taylor, Founder, Title IX for All

March 1, 2024

The Title IX regulations that went into effect in August of 2020 were critically necessary. Before their implementation, schools too often punished and expelled students accused of misconduct (sexual harassment, assault, stalking, and so forth) in what were little more than sham proceedings. Wrongly punished students found their education prospects shattered, their careers derailed, and their reputations destroyed. Some students were punished despite not being found responsible for any misconduct. Some even committed suicide.

Among other provisions, the 2020 regulations required schools to provide accused students with meaningful notice of the accusation, meaningful access to evidence, and a meaningful opportunity to respond to the evidence. Those critical protections are now threatened by a regulatory rewrite spearheaded by the Biden administration.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget is currently accepting meetings from the public regarding this rewrite. Advocates and concerned citizens should consider this an opportunity to make their voices heard and to push back on attempts by the Biden administration to roll back due process. To do this, it may help to draw attention to indicators that the regulations have been successful. Below are several arguments that the due process protections have been successful and should remain.

1. Trends in Lawsuits by Accused Students Reflect the Need for Due Process

The graph above shows the trend in annual filings of lawsuits by students accused of Title IX violations in state and federal courts since 2011.[1] This trend is highly consistent with changes to Title IX guidance and regulation. Simply put, the fewer the rights afforded accused students and the weaker the emphasis on due process by the current presidential administration, the more lawsuits by accused students we see. The reverse is also true.

In 2011, the Department of Education issued guidance (the “Dear Colleague” letter) for schools to investigate Title IX complaints more rigorously. The Department also threatened to revoke funding from schools that failed to comply and initiated highly visible investigations that named and shamed many of them. Afraid of lawsuits, federal investigations, and bad press, schools rushed to comply – and soon overcorrected. As you can see in the graph, that overcorrection was the genesis of the litigation movement for accused students. Lawsuits trickled in at first, gained a foothold in 2014 and 2015, and then spiked, reaching their peak in 2017 and 2018.

In September 2017, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rescinded the Department of Education’s 2011 guidance letter and announced an imminent rulemaking process to further flesh out schools’ liabilities and the balance of rights between complainants and respondents in school grievance procedures. The Department issued a draft of the new regulations in November 2018 and published the final rule in May 2020. The rule went into effect on August 14, 2020.

DeVos’ rescinding the Dear Colleague letter and announcing a new rulemaking procedure made it clear that the era of federal complicity (if not encouragement) for schools to systematically railroad accused students was over. Consistent with this new era of due process, annual filings of lawsuits have declined by twenty or more since 2018. By 2023, lawsuits had declined by sixty percent from their peak: from 126 in 2018 to around 50 in 2013. This indicates that the regulations are having the intended effect: despite troublesome hotspots remaining, schools have, in many cases, made efforts to comply.

The decline stopped in 2022, however. That is no accident; it occurred a year after the Biden administration announced a plan to undo much of the due process protections afforded by the 2020 regulations. While 2024 has just begun, at least seven lawsuits have been filed by accused students as of mid-February. If recent trends continue, we will likely see at least as many lawsuits in 2024 as we did in 2023 – and likely more.

2. The 2020 Regulations Have Consistently Withstood Legal Challenges

Five legal challenges have been made against the regulations in federal court. All have failed to overturn them. While two failed simply because the plaintiffs lacked standing, others failed on the merits of their claims. The five lawsuits are:

Victim Rights Law Center v. DeVos

This lawsuit failed to overturn the 2020 regulations by arguing it was in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act and discriminates against women. It was, however, successful in overturning a narrow provision[2] that required schools to not rely on statements that were not subject to cross-examination when making their determinations.

2. The Women’s Student Union v. U.S. Department of Education

This case was initially dismissed for lack of standing. WSU – a feminist student association – argued the 2020 regulations would “frustrate its mission” to assist complainants. The court held otherwise: that such a group “may not establish injury by engaging in activities that it would normally pursue as part of its organizational mission. WSU appealed the dismissal to the Ninth Circuit which then stayed the case pending the completion of the Biden administration’s rulemaking process.

3. State of New York v. U.S. Department of Education

Brought by the New York Attorney General’s office, this lawsuit sought an injunction to prevent the rule from going into effect. It failed on every factor upon which injunctive relief is decided: the likelihood they would succeed on the merits of their claims, whether they or students would suffer irreparable harm, the balance of equities (“harms”) between the parties if the injunction did or did not go into effect, and the public interest. The State of New York then withdrew the lawsuit.

4. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. DeVos

A coalition of state Attorneys General brought this lawsuit to postpone the effective date of the rule, declare it unlawful, vacate it, or enjoin the Department of Education from applying and enforcing it. The motion to postpone the rule failed. The rest of the proceedings have been stayed.

5. Know Your IX et al v. DeVos

Similar to the WSU case, Know Your IX and similar organizations argued that the 2020 rule “frustrates its mission” to assist and advocate for complainants in Title IX proceedings. Judge Bennett disagreed and dismissed the case.

3. Schools Have Continuously Exhibited a Desire to Deny Due Process

The due process protections provided by the 2020 Title IX rule had one “clever workaround” for schools: they did not apply to allegations of misconduct occurring off-campus and outside an educational program or activity.[3] Schools could, however, still investigate and punish students under a “non-Title IX” policy that lacked those protections.

Advocates for complainants believed that schools would use this as an excuse to forgo investigating such alleged misconduct at all since there was now no federal requirement to do so. The reality, however, is that Title IX bureaucracy tends to be staffed by what some have called the “sex police”: bureaucrats who regard it as their mission to root out any kind of potentially offensive behavior and continuously seek reasons to expand their reach rather than retract it. Lawsuits by accused students have shown this is the case. Starting in 2021, they brought a new batch of lawsuits arguing schools were erroneously applying “non-Title IX” policies[4] as an excuse to railroad them out of campus.

The Biden administration seeks to expand the requirements of Title IX so that schools must investigate off-campus activity but without the due process protections that would curb some of the worst impulses of the sex police.

4. The 2020 Regulations Have Forced Their Opponents to Inadvertently Defend Them

Opponents of due process often argue that such protections would make school grievance procedures “too quasi-judicial” or “too court-like.” This argument is not sincere, as such groups have demanded that courts and schools recognize and treat grievance procedures as quasi-judicial and court-like when it benefits accusers.

While many examples of this exist, perhaps the most blatant recent example comes from the lawsuit Khan v. Yale in which an accused student also sued his accuser Jane Doe for defamation. Jane Doe argued that even if her statements against Khan were deliberately false and malicious, she was nonetheless entitled to immunity from a defamation lawsuit because her statements were made in the context of a quasi-judicial proceeding. In 2022, fifteen powerful advocacy groups filed an amicus brief supporting Doe’s argument – including those who opposed the 2020 regulations for being too quasi-judicial.

But as Connecticut Supreme Court held, Yale’s investigation and punishment of Khan occurred before the 2020 regulations went into effect and hence lacked virtually all the key safeguards that would establish the proceedings as quasi-judicial and entitle Jane Doe to immunity.

Other Arguments and Conclusion

Although there are numerous indicators that the 2020 regulations have been successful, these are four particularly noteworthy ones. Other potential supporting arguments could be that:

Litigation costs for universities will skyrocket if accused students are again routinely railroaded off campus, and that
The due process protections of the 2020 regulations have disincentivized false reporting and sham proceedings, which in turn bolsters the integrity of Title IX grievance procedures and allows school resources to be distributed more effectively.

Advocacy opportunities are often time sensitive; once they are gone, they are gone. This advocacy window is still open. Please go to the Office for Management and Budget website and register a meeting to make your voice heard.

Links:

[1] See the Title IX Lawsuits Database for a full listing of these lawsuits.

[2] Section 106.45(b)(6)(i)

[3] Section 106.45(b)(3)(i)

[4] Examples include Doe v. Rutgers and Doe I v. SUNY-Buffalo.

Legal

Paternity Fraud Continues to be a Devastating Problem for Some, But Progress is Being Made

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date February 19, 2024

Paternity Fraud Continues to be a Devastating Problem for Some, But Progress is Being Made

SAVE

February 19, 2024. Updated on February 26, 2024

Paternity fraud refers to the misattribution by a mother of the identity of the child’s father. Paternity fraud is a big problem in the United States. Some studies estimate that as many as 30% of births are attributed to the wrong father, who is forced to pay years of child support for a child who is not his.

This case reveals the extent to which some women will go to get child support:

Bachelor Paternity Case in Court! Clayton Echard Wins Big.

https://pjmedia.com/megan-fox/2024/02/22/bachelor-paternity-case-in-court-clayton-echard-wins-big-n4926673

Echard has maintained over the last nine months that Owens was never pregnant and that the entire lawsuit was based on fraud. Legal filings allege that Owens wore a fake pregnancy belly, provided Echard with faked sonograms, went to the media to ruin Echard’s reputation, refused discovery, and would not allow Echard to speak to her alleged doctors. Further investigation into the case found that Owens had taken at least two other men to court with similar allegations in the past.

Owens tried to have the case against Echard dismissed in January when she filed a motion claiming she was “no longer pregnant,” hoping the entire thing would get scrapped. Echard’s attorneys filed a motion to continue the court process to prove that the allegations she made were in bad faith and based on lies.

Effects on the Child

Paternity fraud is not only harmful to the father; it also causes psychological trauma to the child when they discover they are the victims of paternity fraud.

This 2018 story from The Atlantic reveals how DNA ancestry companies train their staff to help clients deal with the trauma of discovering their fathers weren’t who they thought.

WHEN A DNA TEST SHATTERS YOUR IDENTITY

“Each person comes into our group thinking they are a freak.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/dna-test-misattributed-paternity/562928/

It was Ancestry DNA’s customer-service rep who had to break the news to Catherine St Clair.

For her part, St Clair thought she was inquiring about a technical glitch. Her brother—the brother who along with three other siblings had gifted her the DNA test for her birthday—wasn’t showing up right in her family tree. It was not a glitch, the woman on the line had to explain gently, if this news can ever land gently: The man St Clair thought of as her brother only shared enough DNA with her to be a half-sibling. In fact, she didn’t match any family members on her father’s side. Her biological father must be someone else.

And a more recent article from El Pais:

Who is my father? The psychological impact of at-home DNA tests

At a time in which paternity is diffuse and expansive, science provides the ultimate certainty. But can you handle it?

El Pais, Dec. 29, 2023

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-12-29/who-is-my-father-the-psychological-impact-of-at-home-dna-tests.html

Never before in history has it been so easy to confirm paternity, nor to discover discrepancies, with such certainty. In 2018, the DNA NPE Friends Facebook community established a non-profit support group. At the beginning of 2023 there were approximately 8,900 people registered. A qualitative study published in 2021 by Michele Grethel and collaborators from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (UCLA), reports the impact on the identity of 27 participants between 40 and 70 years old, with a mean age of 50 years, who discovered an unexpected paternity as a result of an at-home DNA test. None of them were indifferent, or optimistic, about the discovery.

These children revealed feelings of shock, denial, anger, fear, confusion and isolation. Their extreme emotional reactions and bodily sensations — feeling frozen, dazed, overwhelmed — were common. Many tried to track down their newly discovered relatives, describing the process as an emotional roller coaster.

Misattributed paternity (which is one of several euphemisms for paternity fraud) can have serious medical consequences. Medicine is becoming increasingly personalized and tailored to patients’ genetic backgrounds. These therapies are less effective – or sometimes even counterproductive – if patients don’t have an accurate picture of their ancestry.

As a result, the medical profession is beginning to address the paternity fraud problem:

An old problem in a new age: Revisiting the clinical dilemma of misattributed paternity

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4796701/

Clinical genetics has wrestled with the problem of misattributed paternity for decades. While there are no clear directives on policy, surveys suggest that genetics professionals are inclined to avoid disclosure when possible. Changes associated with the increased use of genomic testing will alter the context and may limit the benefits of non-disclosure. Multi-site testing will preclude the uncertainty often associated with single-gene testing. Increased use of genetic testing in clinical and non-clinical settings will create new opportunities for the subsequent unmasking of misattributed relationships, as will the presence of test results in the electronic medical record. Family health history information will become more valuable as it is used more often and to better effect in risk assessment, diagnosis, treatment and reproductive decision-making. These changes associated with genomic testing increase the risks and decrease the benefits associated with the nondisclosure of misattributed paternity. For ethical and practical reasons, genetics professionals, and those who advise them, should consider a greater emphasis on the value of carefully planned disclosure.

Legislative Response

Lay people, and even lawyers, are often shocked when they read about the cavalier way in which American law treats paternity fraud. In a nutshell, a society that is focused solely on reproductive freedom for women turns a blind eye to reproductive freedom for men. Needless to say, this is an egregious equal protection violation.

Fortunately, many states are starting to address the problem of paternity fraud. Tennessee has been a leader in this regard. In 2022, Tennessee enacted a new law that criminalizes paternity fraud. Under the new law, a person commits “parentage fraud” if the person:

(1) Seeks to legally establish the individual as the biological parent of a child in the person’s custody with intent to deprive the individual of property or to prevent the child’s actual biological parent from exercising parental rights to the child and the person knows or reasonably should know that the individual is not the child’s biological parent; or

(2) Seeks to be legally established as a child’s parent based on the person’s status as a biological parent of the child and the person knows or reasonably should know that the person is not the child’s biological parent.

“Parentage fraud” is a Class A misdemeanor. The new law passed the Tennessee legislature by overwhelming margins. This article explains more about the Tennessee law:

New proposed bill will protect Tennessee’s parents from paternity fraud | Opinion

Rep. Antonio Parkinson’s proposed bill will insure that the actual biological father is listed on the birth certificate of the child.

https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2022/03/29/new-proposed-bill-protects-tennessees-parents-paternity-fraud/7200208001/

Recently I was approached by a young man who told me he had been in a long-term relationship. Together they had a son and he signed the voluntary acknowledgement of paternity (VAP). They were not married.

Five years later, he found out the mother had been unfaithful during the time they were together. He and the child took a DNA test. The results proved that he was not the father. Subsequently, the relationship ended. The woman then sued him for child support.

In Juvenile Court, he presented the DNA evidence to the magistrate and was basically told, “somebody’s got to feed him and it will be you.” He was ordered to pay child support and found in arrears. Eventually his license was suspended and he was pulled over and jailed for driving on a suspended license.

Sitting in jail, he lost his job.

Because he voluntarily signed and it had passed a 5-year period to rescind the voluntary acknowledgment, he was deemed the legal parent. Through this process, the actual, biological parent’s child was stolen from him.

Finally, under this scenario, the child’s right to have their legal biological father listed on their birth certificate and in some cases, their lives, was stolen from them also.

The year before, Tennessee enacted a law that removes the five-year statute of limitations for challenging a voluntary acknowledgment of paternity on the grounds of fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact.

About 10 states now allow recovery for paternity fraud. while another eight do not. The recent trend is toward allowing recovery. Here are states that allow recovery for paternity fraud:

DiMichele v. Perrella, 51 Conn. L. Rptr. 750 (Conn. Super. Ct. 2011); Koelle v. Zwiren, 672 N.E.2d 868 (Ill. App. Ct.. 1996); Dier v. Peters, 815 N.W.2d I (Iowa 2012); Denzik v. Denzik, 197 S.W.3d 108 (Ky. 2006); Mansfield v. Neff, 31 Mass. L. Rptr. 616 (Mass. Super. Ct. 2014); G.A.W., III v. D.M.W., 596 N.W.2d 284 (Minn. Ct. App. 1999); R.A.C. v. P.J.S., Jr., 927 A.2d 97 (N.J. 2007); Miller v. Miller, 956 P.2d 887 (Ok. 1998); Hodge v. Craig, 382 S.W.3d 325 (Tenn. 2012); Masters v. Worsley, 777 P.2d 499 (Utah Ct. App. 1989).

Here are states that do not allow recovery for paternity fraud:

Coulson v. Steiner, 2015 WL 10013667 (D. Alaska 2015); Nagy v. Nagy, 210 Cal.App.3d 1262 (Cal. Ct. App. 1989); Steve H. v. Wendy S., 960 P.2d 510, 67 Cal.Rptr.2d 90 (Cal. Ct. App. 1998); Grand v. Hope, 617 S.E.2d 593 (Ga. Ct. App. 2005); Doe v. Doe, 747 A.2d 617 (Md. 2000); Renel v. Fortuna, 2014 WL 4628811 (Mich. Ct. App. 2014); Day v. Heller, 653 N.W.2d 475 (Neb. 2002); Hevey v. Hundley, 2013 WL 5782924 (Tex. App. 2013); Koestler v. Pollard, 471 N.W.2d 7 (Wis. 1991); St. Hilaire v. DeBlois, 721 A.2d 133 (Vt. 1998).

Judicial Response

In 2011, a case titled Hodge v. Craig, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that a man could sue his ex-wife for paternity fraud. “We have determined that the existing common law action for intentional misrepresentation encompasses the claims made in this case by the former husband and that the trial court’s damage award based on the former husband’s post-divorce payments for child support, medical expenses, and insurance premiums is not an improper retroactive modification of the former husband’s child support obligation.” (At least nine other states, including Iowa, similarly allow recovery for paternity fraud.)

Developments in Nebraska

The Nebraska Supreme Court has persistently enabled paternity fraud. That is obviously bad policy from a legal perspective – courts shouldn’t tolerate any kind of fraud. As the Iowa Supreme Court noted when it rejected the Nebraska Supreme Court’s hands-off approach to paternity fraud, “We recognize fraud as a cause of action partly to deter lying. One good reason to allow fraud claims to go forward in the area of paternity fraud is to avoid the situation that has allegedly arisen here.” In a long line of cases, the Nebraska Supreme Court has consistently enabled paternity fraud.

In March, 2022 for example, the Nebraska Supreme Court held in a split 4-3 decision that a man who DNA testing had already shown to be the father of two new-born children did not have standing to establish legal rights to his children. The opinion, written by Chief Justice Michael Heavican, used a tortured application of the standing doctrine to reverse a trial decision and prevent the biological father from asserting rights to his own children. Under the court’s interpretation, it’s unclear how a biological father could ever assert legal rights to a child in this situation. The dissent summarizes the problem in a single sentence: “[t]he majority concludes that our statutory presumption of legitimacy as applied to children born in a marriage is rebuttable and, yet, operates to preclude interested parties from rebutting it.” Chaterjee v. Chaterjee, 313 Neb. 710 (2023).

In a 2014 case, the Nebraska Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and held that a man who was falsely told he was the father of a child had to pay child support to the biological father. State ex rel. B.M. v. Brian F., 288 Neb. 106 (2014). See also “Man who isn’t biological dad responsible for child support, court finds,” Lincoln Journal Star (May 16, 2014), available at https://journalstar.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/man-who-isnt-biological-dad-responsible-for-child-support-court-finds/article_6c861757-7d2a-5557-b022-cd0a1ce34970.html

In a 2002 case, the Nebraska Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and held that a man who was falsely told he was the father of a child could not bring a claim for damages against a biological mother based on paternity fraud because it was “contrary to public policy.” Day v. Heller, 264 Neb. 934 (2002). Paternity fraud appears to be the only fraud for which the Nebraska Supreme Court refuses to provide a remedy.

It’s worth noting that subsequent courts that considered the Nebraska Supreme Court holding in Day have rejected its reasoning. In the 2012 case of Dier v. Peters, for example, the Iowa Supreme Court extensively discussed the earlier Nebraska decision but was “not persuaded.” As the Iowa court noted:

Also, we need to consider the public policy implications of an opposite ruling. We recognize fraud as a cause of action partly to deter lying. One good reason to allow fraud claims to go forward in the area of paternity fraud is to avoid the situation that has allegedly arisen here. We have emphasized that “public policy” is not predicated on this court’s “generalized concepts of fairness and justice.”

Department of Education Due Process Free Speech Gender Agenda Gender Identity Legal Office for Civil Rights Title IX

Sounding the Alarm: Call for Americans to Oppose Biden Title IX Plan!

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date February 19, 2024

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Hain: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Sounding the Alarm: Call for Americans to Oppose Biden Title IX Plan!

WASHINGTON / February 20, 2024 – A new poll of 1,600 persons reveals a majority of registered voters across the political spectrum now support state laws that would require children to wait until age 18 before they can receive transgender treatments: Republicans: 73%; Independents: 71%; and Democrats: 61%. (1)

The controversy came to light last week in New Hampshire where a new record was set in the girls’ high jump competition. Maelle Jacques succeeded in jumping 5’1”, breaking the previous female record by a full inch (2). But the athletic accomplishment was overshadowed by the fact that Jacques is a biological male who now identifies as transgender.

Similar reports have become commonplace for a range of concerns related to Title IX, the federal sex discrimination law: Due process for falsely accused male students (3), gender transitioning of underage minors (4), pronoun mandates (5), campus free speech (6), and more.

The uproar springs from a controversial 2022 Department of Education proposal to change the definition of sex to include “gender identity” (7). The Title IX plan has faced strong opposition across the country:

Numerous attorneys general and federal lawmakers issued statements of opposition (8).
25 Republican governors called on the Biden administration to withdraw its proposed changes to Title IX. (9)
Nearly 60 political candidates signed a Pledge to “Protect Schools, Children, and Families from the Federal Title IX Plan” (10)

In addition, 23 states have banned gender transitioning among children (11), 10 states outlawed pronoun mandates (12), and 23 states enacted laws to protect women’s sports from transgender athletes (13).

On February 2, the Department of Education forwarded its controversial regulation to the federal Office for Management and Budget for final approval.

SAVE is urging the American public to speak out in strong opposition to the Biden Title IX plan. We invite you to contact the Office for Management and Budget to politely express your concerns. For details how to schedule a meeting, visit: https://www.saveservices.org/2022-policy/abolish-doe/

Links:

Campus Civil Rights Department of Education Due Process Free Speech Legal Press Release Title IX

Tampon Dispenser Incident Highlights Growing Rejection of ‘Gender Agenda’

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date February 5, 2024

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Hain: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Tampon Dispenser Incident Highlights Growing Rejection of ‘Gender Agenda’

WASHINGTON / February 5, 2024 – School officials at Brookfield High School in Connecticut recently installed a tampon dispenser in the boys’ bathroom. Within minutes, male students at the school took action. Principal Marc Balanda dryly reported, “The installation was completed at 9:30 (a.m.). By 9:52, tampons were on the floor, the newly installed distribution box was ripped off the wall along with the masonry anchors, and the distribution box itself was destroyed.” (1)

A few days later on January 25, the Maine Judiciary Committee voted to kill the LD 1735, a bill that was designed to allow children from other states to travel to Maine, without parental consent, and become a ward of the state to receive cross-gender treatments (2).

The following day, the Utah legislature passed HB 257, which prohibits men who identify as women from accessing women’s bathrooms (3).

These events in Connecticut, Maine, and Utah reveal how the so-called “Gender Agenda,” which seeks to reshape society by defining the meaning of sex to include “gender identity,” is facing setbacks in both Democratic and Republican-led states.

Five judicial decisions, all handed down during the month of January, further underscore how the Gender Agenda is in retreat across the nation:

California: On January 10, federal judge Roger Benitez ordered the Escondido Union School District to reinstate two teachers who were placed on administrative leave for refusing to keep students’ gender transitions a secret from their parents (4).

Alabama: In 2022, the Alabama legislature passed the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection (VCAP) Act that banned the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for underage children. But the US Department of Justice challenged the law. On January 12, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction against the VCAP law, allowing its protections for children to go into effect (5).

Illinois: Disturbed by a long list of due process violations by the college, federal judge Colleen Lawless issued a restraining order on January 19 against the University of Illinois, allowing student Terrence Shannon to return to school (6).

Ohio: In late December, Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed House Bill 68, which sought to protect minors from transgender medical interventions and block males from competing against girls and women in sports. On January 24, the Ohio Senate voted to override the governor’s veto, allowing House Bill 68 to go into effect (7).

Florida: A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit on January 31 that had been filed by the Disney Corporation over the state legislature’s decision to alter the governing structure of Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District. Disney had argued in the lawsuit that the change to the district was made in retaliation for the organization’s criticism of the Parental Rights in Education Act (8).

In 2023, dozens of laws were enacted around the country to ban gender transitioning among underage students (9), uphold parental rights (10), stop pronoun mandates (11) and protect women’s sports (12).

A strong majority of Americans opposes the Gender Agenda (13). SAVE encourages lawmakers to work to block the Gender Agenda.

Citations:

Department of Education Legal Office for Civil Rights Title IX

Department of Education Made a Mockery of APA Law to Fast-Track Lethal Transgender Policy

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date October 17, 2023

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Hain: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Department of Education Made a Mockery of APA Law to Fast-Track Lethal Transgender Policy

WASHINGTON / October 18, 2023 – During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised a “quick end” to the Trump Administration’s Title IX rule (1). From the first day of the Biden Administration, Suzanne Goldberg took over the helm at the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Goldberg served in that capacity until November 17, 2021, when Catherine Lhamon took over as the new Assistant Secretary for Education.

Little did members of the American public suspect that they were about to witness a flagrant abuse of the federal law known as the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). (2) The law requires federal agencies to publish an advance version of any proposed regulation, so persons are able to express their views on the proposed Rule (3).

On June 22, 2021, without advance warning or notice, the OCR issued a new Title IX Rule (4). The regulation warned schools that OCR would “fully enforce Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in education programs and activities.” The new policy took effect on the same day.

The new Rule represented a violation of all three APA requirements:

No prior notice.
No opportunity for public review and comment.
No agency response to public comments, since no comments had been solicited.

In response, on August 30, 2021 the Attorneys General from 20 states — AL, AK, AZ, AR, GA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, MS, MO, MT, NE, OH, OK, SC, SD, TN, and WV — brought a 14-count lawsuit against the DOE, alleging the Title IX Rule was procedurally and substantively unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act (5). Nearly one year later, on July 15, 2022, the District Court of Tennessee issued a Temporary Injunction against the directive (6). But the Temporary Injunction only applies to the 20 states that had filed the lawsuit.

But the damage had been done. Educators across the country had been warned of the dire consequences of not enforcing the new transgender policy. By recent count, 10.7 million students are now attending schools with policies stating personnel can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents (7).

Now, about 300,000 American youth ages 13-17 identify as transgender, representing a doubling of their numbers in the past five years (8). And 18% of LGBTQ youth attempted suicide in the past year (9).

Encouraging hundreds of thousands of children and youth to transition to a different sex represents a radical medical experiment. In the words of ethicist Ryan Anderson, “Doctors are conducting a giant experiment that does not come close to the ethical standards demanded in other areas of medicine.” (10)

In short, OCR leaders Suzanne Goldberg and Catherine Lhamon simply ignored the Administrative Procedure Act in order to bow to Joe Biden’s campaign promise. The abuses were so calculated, flagrant, and contrary to the public interest that Suzanne Goldberg and Catherine Lhamon must now resign their positions at the U.S. Department of Education.

Send email to: alejandro.reyes@ed.gov

Citations:

Civil Rights Gender Agenda Legal Press Release Violence

HOAX: White House Claim of a ‘Surge’ of ‘Hate-Fueled Violence’ Against Transgenders is Total Inversion of the Truth

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date June 15, 2023

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Hain: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

HOAX: White House Claim of a ‘Surge’ of ‘Hate-Fueled Violence’ Against Transgenders is Total Inversion of the Truth

June 19, 2023 – The White House announced a new initiative on June 8 to counter a purported “surge” of “hate-fueled violence” against the LGBTQI+ community (1). But a review of evidence from the Department of Homeland Security and the Human Rights Campaign reveals no evidence of any “surge” of violence against transgender persons.

Department of Homeland Security: The White House “FACT SHEET” links to the Department of Homeland Security’s Summary of Terrorism-Related Threat to the United States (2). The DHS Summary lists four “terrorism-related” incidents that occurred in 2023.

One incident was the March shooting by transgender Audrey Hale of three students and staff members in Nashville (3). The other incident involved the burning of an Ohio church that was planning to hold a drag-themed event (4).

The two other incidents listed by DHS had no connection to LGBTQI+ issues (5,6).

Human Rights Campaign: The Human Rights Campaign tracks homicides of transgendered and nonbinary persons. Thus far in 2023, the HRC lists 12 homicides of these persons. A review of these cases provides no evidence of a “surge” of violence, or that the murders were “hate-fueled.” Indeed, the HRC reveals, “Most of these victims were killed by partners and acquaintances.” (7)

Real Surge of Violence: A surge of transgender-related violence has occurred in recent months. In contrast to the White House claim, the attacks have been perpetrated by transgender activists. SAVE has documented 20 such cases thus far in 2023. The incidents involved murders, bomb threats, and other assaults against parents, children, law enforcement, and others (8).

The most recent incident, reported on June 14, was the life sentence handed down to Dana Rivers, a prominent trans rights activist, for Rivers’ triple homicide of a lesbian couple and their son. Alameda County Judge Scott Patton described the bloody attack as “The most depraved crime that I’ve ever handled.” (9)

Overall, a detailed review of the cases listed by the Department of Homeland Security and the Human Rights Campaign identifies only one incident that could be classified as “hate-fueled” — the Ohio church conflagration. A single incident does not qualify as a “surge.”

In contrast, SAVE identified three incidents of violence by transgender persons in 2022, and 20 such cases thus far in 2023. This six-fold increase in a single year clearly represents a “surge” of violence committed by transgender individuals.

The claim of a “surge” of “hate-fueled” violence against the LGBTQI+ community is a categorical inversion of the truth.

SAVE urges persons to contact the White House and tell them to retract its dishonest “FACT SHEET” about transgender violence. Telephone: 202-456-1111. Email: comments@whitehouse.gov

Links:

Campus Civil Rights Due Process Legal Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX

Supreme Court Must Resolve the Many Circuit Splits that Divide Students’ Rights

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date May 25, 2023

Supreme Court Must Resolve the Many Circuit Splits that Divide Students’ Rights

Benjamin North

Associate & Title IX Advisor, Binnall Law Group

May 24, 2023

When a student graduates from high school and looks at potential colleges, they don’t typically do legal research to see where their federal rights differ across federal circuits. They make a very reasonable assumption that their basic rights are the same, because all colleges in the United States are subject to the same federal laws. Unfortunately, this could not be further from the truth when it comes to student discipline. And the recent proliferation of litigation against colleges (meticulously tracked by Brooklyn College professor KC Johnson [1]) has only made the issue more dire.

Court simply cannot agree on the Title IX disciplinary process. Without uniformity in the law, students across the country are subject to wildly different standards, both with respect to what process a university must take before depriving students of their education, and as to what they must allege in a lawsuit if it becomes necessary to correct discriminatory disciplinary actions in court.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has been thus far reluctant to take any of these issues up on certiorari, and its continued delay in resolving these divides will only result in more inconsistencies. Students deserve the same rights under the same law, and it is critical that the Supreme Court ensure that basic consistency.

The first area in which courts are split is the requirement of constitutional due process; that is, the process that a public school must follow before depriving its students of their education in the form of a suspension or expulsion.

The threshold question, of course, is whether education is protected by due process, and if there is any “due process” required at all. If there is no due process required at all, public schools are free as a constitutional matter to expel tuition paying students for no reason at all, and students have no recourse.

While this would seem on its face to be unjust and incompatible with our system of government (and contrary to existing Supreme Court law in Goss v. Lopez [2]), federal district courts in the Fourth Circuit [3] consistently decline to find any protected interest in public university students’ education, leading to that same result: that students are not entitled to any due process at all. While several circuit courts have held that due process applies (at least the First, [4] Fifth, [5] Sixth, [6] Seventh, [7] and Eighth [8] Circuits), the continued failure of the Supreme Court to address the issue directly means that students in the Fourth Circuit very likely will continue to be on the receiving end of judicial opinions that fail to recognize any due process interests whatsoever. Students deserve a clear and basic rule, that due process applies in the public university setting.

Of course, once it is decided that due process applies, the next question is what process is due? On this question, circuits also are split.

The Sixth Circuit, for example, held in Doe v. Baum [9] that live adversarial cross examination was required by due process in student discipline cases where credibility is an issue. The First Circuit disagreed, holding in Haidak v. University of Massachusetts-Amherst [10] that live cross examination is not required; rather, impartial questioning by a hearing panel is required. Setting aside the point that the Sixth Circuit took the correct approach (the standard of an “impartial” hearing panel is more vague and far less workable that simply requiring cross examination, among other issues), the issue remains that students in different circuits have different rights, under the same Constitution.

Similarly, circuits are split on what Title IX requires in these cases. The Second Circuit held in Yusuf v. Vassar College [11] that students seeking to remedy discriminatory discipline under Title IX must plead “erroneous outcome” or “selective enforcement” causes of action under the statute. The Seventh Circuit in Doe v. Purdue [12] disagreed, holding that students need only plead facts sufficient to infer discrimination (which tracks almost exactly the language of the Title IX statute itself). This is a foundational difference on what it takes to bring a Title IX lawsuit in the first place, and again, students have wildly different standards based on where they live or attend school.

Even more alarming, sometimes schools assert during litigation that they may have been biased against the student, but it wasn’t on the basis of sex. This argument, schools hope, saves them from liability under Title IX because the law does not prohibit schools from railroading students per se, only if they do so on the basis of the student’s sex.

Circuits again disagree on whether this argument is sufficient to save the school from liability, or put another way, whether a student has to disprove other potential causes of discipline before getting to discovery or to trial. For example, whereas the Eleventh Circuit in Doe v. Samford [13] affirmed a dismissal of a Title IX lawsuit because the student did not disprove other potential causes of the discipline (other than bias on the basis of sex) in his complaint, the Tenth Circuit in Doe v. University of Denver [14] permitted a lawsuit to go to trial on this issue. The Tenth Circuit reasoned, correctly, that the issue of what bias the university used (bias on the basis of sex or bias on the basis of the student being the accused) is a question of fact that needs to be resolved by a jury, because it comes down to what is more believable. Once again, circuits are split, and students across the country do not have uniform rights.

The above is not an exhaustive listing of all of the disagreements among the federal circuit courts in this area. There are other important areas where courts disagree, including the causation standard for Title IX. But for sake of brevity, suffice it to say that students across the country do not have a clear view of what their rights are. Students deserve the same rights under the same law, and I desperately hope that the Supreme Court takes the opportunity to make that a reality in the near future.

Citations:

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CsFhy86oxh26SgTkTq9GV_BBrv5NAA5z9cv178Fjk3o/edit#gid=0

[2] Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975)

[3] See, e.g., Doe v. Alger, 175 F. Supp. 3d 646 (W.D. Va. 2016); Dillow v. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. & State Univ., No. 7:22CV00280, 2023 WL 2320765 (W.D. Va. Mar. 2, 2023); Doe v. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. & State Univ., 400 F. Supp. 3d 479 (W.D. Va. 2019).

[4] See Haidak, infra.

[5] Walsh v. Hodge, 975 F.3d 475 (5th Cir. 2020)

[6] See Baum, infra.

[7] See Purdue, infra.

[8] Doe v. Univ. of Arkansas – Fayetteville, 974 F.3d 858 (8th Cir. 2020)

[9] Doe v. Baum, 903 F.3d 575 (6th Cir. 2018)

[10] Haidak v. Univ. of Massachusetts-Amherst, 933 F.3d 56 (1st Cir. 2019)

[11] Yusuf v. Vassar Coll., 35 F.3d 709 (2d Cir. 1994)

[12] Doe v. Purdue Univ., 928 F.3d 652 (7th Cir. 2019)

[13] Doe v. Samford Univ., 29 F.4th 675 (11th Cir. 2022)

[14] Doe v. Univ. of Denver, 1 F.4th 822 (10th Cir. 2021)

Child Custody Domestic Violence False Allegations Istanbul Convention Law & Justice Legal

CONSEQUENCES OF THE LAW OF GENDER VIOLENCE AND GENDER IDEOLOGY IN SPAIN

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date February 6, 2023

CONSEQUENCES OF THE LAW OF GENDER VIOLENCE AND GENDER IDEOLOGY IN SPAIN

D. Jesús Muñoz

Dª María Legaz

National Association for Assistance to Victims of Domestic Violence (Asociacion Nacional de Ayuda a Victimas de Ayuda de Violencia Doméstica)

24 January 2023

The passage of the LIVG, the comprehensive law against gender-based violence, in Spain in 2004 has led to the violation of the fundamental rights of all heterosexual citizens, especially loss of the “presumption of innocence.”

The socialist party, from which this ideology of copyright criminal law
originated, had on the table, according to public statements by one of its proponents, safeguarding the protection of victims or the presumption of innocence. They opted for the protection of victims, destroying the “presumption of innocence” for hundreds of thousands of men in the past 18 years.

The gender violence law is based on the study of the Minneapolis mandatory arrest law.

From 2004 to 2022, there have been more than 2,260,000 judicial
proceedings, with more than 1,705,000 defendants ending up being declared innocent. This means that innocent people have been prosecuted with public money, depriving them of their liberty. By applying Article 544 TER of the Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal, they have been separated from their children, with jail detentions of 24 and 72 hours. These detentions normally take place on weekends, beginning on Fridays, so the man spends the whole weekend in a jail with deplorable hygienic conditions. The man is in a state of shock, not knowing why he has been deprived of liberty, expelled from his house with only what he was wearing. and deprived of his children’s visitation regime.

An average of more than 455 men are arrested every day in Spain for allegations of gender violence, based solely on the word of a woman. An average of 160,000 men are prosecuted each year as terrorists. Year after year, it has been shown that more than 80% of them, who have been deprived of their liberty, are declared innocent, according to data from the General Council of the Judiciary.

Hundreds of billions of euros are spent in Spain, coming from the European Union, squandered by political parties. As an example, between 2014 and 2016 the Junta de Andalucía spent a whopping sum of more than of 66,000 millions of euros.

The European Union allocates €366 billion a year to addressing gender violence. None of these grants are audited.

An estimation of the costs of gender violence in the EU, according to a study carried out by the United Kingdom, estimated that Spain received from more than 24,000 million euros in 2012. With these funds, networks of feminist associations related to political parties have been created, which obtain economic revenue through their gender ideology.

The Spanish gender violence law is based on author’s criminal law, as
stated on page 92 and 93 of the CGPJ’s, LIVG draft report and
Constitutional Court Judgment 59/2008, dated July 4. The Particular
vote of five magistrates, including Judge Jorge Rodríguez Zapata, states
in writing, on folio 25 of the sentences, that this law would make the
dreams of Edmund Mezger, German jurist from Nazi Germany, come true.

He writes in the seventh paragraph:

“Finally, I express my wish that this Judgment not to be the
beginning in our order of the fulfillment of Mezger’s dream: two
Criminal Laws; a criminal law for the generality, in which, in essence, the principles that have governed up to now will remain in force. And, along with it, a completely different criminal law, for special groups of certain people. I leave a record of my position in this Vote.
In Madrid, on May fourteenth, two thousand and eight. Jorge
Rodriguez Zapata Perez. -Signed”.

In addition to this, a renowned member of the Socialist party and expresident of the Spanish Government, Alfonso Guerra, publicly declared that he spoke with an acquaintance of his, who had been the president of the Constitutional Court in 2004, who confirmed to him that the seven magistrates who approved the unconstitutional law, that they did so under pressure from feminist lobbies, and from the socialist party of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero:

Alfonso Guerra reveals the pressure on the TC on the LIVG.

In Spain we are suffering from what Poland and Hungary already warned about, which is why they withdrew from the Istanbul Agreement.

If we add to this, that the socialist government subsidized women’s allegations with public money, since the higher the number of allegations, the more women are declared mistreated and the more
money the feminist associations receive. So says the BOE of 2005, Number 215 on page 30453.

Currently, in addition to all of the overhead, a lot of women in a divorce or children custody proceeding, profit from Articles 92.7 and 94 of the Civil Code. These women use the gender violence law so that fathers cannot fight for joint child custody. And with article 94, during the investigation and judicial process, the man is deprived of child visitation rights, despite the fact that 80% of them are eventually declared to be innocent. You can imagine the ordeal they suffer, when one to five years can pass without being able to see their children.

ANAVID asks that all of these discriminatory laws, which violate constitutional, fundamental and human rights, be repealed. These laws are destroying the lives of men, children, and entire families, and are not protecting the truly mistreated women. We demand laws that protect and punish all people equally, regardless of sex, age, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

Furthermore, we ask that any person declared innocent, that had been
deprived of their liberty to be compensated with €600 per day and for
those who have suffered a restraining order being found innocent, we ask for a compensation of €110 per day.

Note: The original Spanish version of this statement is available on the ANAVID website.