On November 29, 2018, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposed amendments to Title IX regulations, and invited the public to comment in response to the proposed rules.
So far more than 104,000 responses have been submitted, which is the most comments ever received by the department in its history of soliciting responses to proposed regulation changes.
If you haven’t submitted a comment yet, it’s not too late.
Though the comment period closed, federal officials announced they are re-opening the comment period for one day: Friday, February 15.
The Women’s Law Project strongly opposes the new regulations. We created materials to share our analysis of the proposed regulations and help you submit a comment:
- WLP’s detailed nine-page analysis of the proposed amendments
- WLP’s summary of our analysis of the proposed amendments (also posted below)
Please submit your comment through our online portal here.
Of course, we also submitted a response to the proposed Title IX guidelines. This is an excerpt from our comments:
The proposed rules would narrow the responsibility of schools to effectively respond to students seeking relief from sexual harassment, restrict the conduct to which schools must respond, narrow the scope of the required school response, mandate specific procedures and standards that favor accused students and impose hurdles on victims, and exceed or conflict with both Title IX and Constitutional mandates.
The proposed amended regulations would allow schools and the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR), in its enforcement capacity, to ignore much of the sexual harassment that occurs in schools and make it significantly harder for victims to obtain relief necessary to maintain access to their education and deter reporting. The elevation of the interests of schools and accuseds over the interests of complainants in safety and access to education and resulting insulation of schools from liability will eviscerate Title IX as far as sexual harassment is concerned. It will make schools less safe in contravention of the purpose of Title IX to protect student access to education.
Read our complete comment here.
Did you submit a comment? Let us know by tweeting us at @WomensLawProj.
The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.
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