The ACLU’s ‘Death Star’ Client in Its Title IX Lawsuit | RealClearPolitics
The American Civil Liberties Union has been deservedly criticized for its May 14 lawsuit indirectly attacking the civil liberties of students accused of sexual assault, who have since 2011 been subjected to grotesquely unfair campus proceedings that effectively presume their guilt.
It s true, as the ACLU claims — after years of shameful silence during the Obama administration campaign to force (all too willing) universities to rig their processes against accused males that its lawsuit against the Betsy DeVos Education Department does not directly attack all of the procedural-fairness reforms in its recently adopted Title IX rules.
But the lawsuit does insist that accused students be found guilty even if the evidence of innocence is almost as strong as the evidence of guilt. It also argues for a far more sweeping definition of sexual harassment than the one in the DeVos regulations (which parallels the definition adopted by the Supreme Court). And its central legal theory that it was illegal for the Education Department to make the rules for universities processing student-on-student claims of sexual harassment and assault less accuser-friendly than those for race-based, national origin-based, and disability-based harassment and assault would logically lead to invalidation of all of the new rules.