What will the Biden administration do to Title IX?
After years of working as lawyers in higher education we see two kinds of students — those who hit the ground running, and those who come with something that delays that process. We also see two kinds of Title IX deans — those who only focus on the race, and those who transform each student into a fully fledged member of a racing team. These views also describe our understanding of sexual misconduct and its punishment under Title IX: There are students who simply never have a sexual misconduct problem (be it as one who complains of sexual misconduct or as one who is accused of sexual misconduct), and there are students who come with something that predisposes them to either accuse or be accused of sexual misconduct. We know of no college that controls for that. This is an inherent part of the higher education experience.
The greater problem, for us, is the Title IX administrators, the deans, because either they behave as bureaucrats just focused on the race, or, rarely, they behave like educators and they account for the predispositions, the uniqueness, the drama and the trauma that gets recreated every time the complainant tells his story and the respondent denies it. Title IX is a federal law, cited as TITLE IX OF THE EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1972, 20 U.S.C. A§ 1681 ET. SEQ. https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/TitleIX-SexDiscrimination#:~:text=Title%20IX%20Of%20The%20Education,A%C2%A7%201681%20Et. which guarantees no sexual harassment to the student in higher education, https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/tix_dis.html and it is administered through the Office of Civil Rights of the Education Department, https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/index.html
As with any law, and with any Department, that administration becomes radically different according to who sits in the White House. Famously, Title IX went from 0 protections for victims of sexual misconduct pre-Obama, to 0 protections for respondents of sexual misconduct under Obama. Ironically, Title IX reached a compromise under Trump, the most deplorable of all US Presidents.
Now, under President Biden, Title IX will again take new meaning. President Biden has just appointed an extraordinarily qualified and cutting edge thinker to lead the Office of Civil Rights. Her name is Suzanne Goldberg and she taught law at Columbia, a law school sort of North West of New York City, where she also administered the Title IX program. See more here: https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/suzanne-goldberg
And that’s the issue of this post:
It doesn’t matter how brilliant and qualified Professor Goldberg is. It doesn’t matter that she comes to the OCR job after Title IX has lived at every stage of a spectrum of relevance and oppression. This does not matter because people still find a way to complain of her appointment. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/01/29/biden-appointee-champion-lgbtq-rights-has-checkered-past-columbia-u?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=0961dbfdec-DNU_2021_COPY_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-0961dbfdec-198217881&mc_cid=0961dbfdec&mc_eid=b9d1a6cadc.
And that’s why our dichotomy works: Just like some students do not hit the ground running, and just like most Title IX administrators only focus on the race, most Title IX activists focus on what could possibly be controversial and not on the massive good to be found there. Voltaire quipped about this problem: Dit que le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good
As we see it the Biden White House will sail through the Title IX storms with compassion, experience, and dignity. We could ask for little more; give or take another lawsuit.
Raul Jauregui
Jauregui Law Firm
I am an attorney and I defend mostly respondents of sexual misconduct in colleges or universities. This is absolutely not my legal opinion or my legal advice, but rather, suggestions on how to protect your family’s college students in this Coronavirus national emergency. If you’re in this situation, in any way, consult a lawyer now.
As posted in Quora:
https://www.quora.com/What-will-the-Biden-administration-do-to-Title-IX/answer/Raul-Jauregui-1
