Another group sues DeVos, DOE over Title IX rules

Another group has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over changes to Title IX rules.

The National Women’s Law Center filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Wednesday, June 10, seeking an injunction before the rules go into effect in this August.

Title IX is a federal law that states no person shall be discriminated against, excluded from or denied benefits in education on the basis of sex.

It also requires institutions to timely report instances of sexual discrimination, harassment or violence.

The new rules deal with which school employees can report instances of sexual misconduct, including school employees like bus drivers, coaches and others to the list of mandatory reporters.

The new rules also allow for cross examinations of accusers (not by the accused party) at the collegiate level.

DOE officials believe the new rules will help schools investigate accusations of sexual assault more promptly. Groups like the NWLC allege this will discourage victims from coming forward.

“The department’s decision to reverse decades of guidance and target survivors of sexual harassment is illegal,” Fatima Goss Graves, NWLC president and CEO, said in a statement.

“Sexual violence is already dramatically underreported in schools, and this is yet another attempt to deliberately silence survivors based on the sexist myth that they are liars.”

A spokesperson from the DOE did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier in June, 18 attorneys general, including Michigan AG Dana Nessel, filed a lawsuit against DeVos and the DOE over the rule changes.

They alleged by implementing the rules in August, schools won’t have time to properly train employees on the proper stages of sexual misconduct reporting, given that the COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered schools across the country.

For DeVos, a Holland native, legal action against her Department of Education has increased over the past year.

Multiple groups have sued DeVos and the DOE over the reversal of the borrower defense rule, an Obama-era rule that offered loan reimbursement and forgiveness for students who took out loans to attend colleges that were found to be fraudulent.

In early May, DeVos and the DOE were sued for continuing to seize paychecks from student-loan borrowers during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the federal CARES Act prohibiting the practice until September.

At the time, a DOE spokesperson said the seizures were a mistake and borrowers were being processed for refunds.

— Contact reporter Arpan Lobo at alobo@hollandsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @arpanlobo.