It was rotting.
The non-profit organization that is supposedly dedicated to protecting the rights of all Americans against government incursions, as the Bill of Rights holds in both letter and spirit, made no effort to protect the citizens whose liberties have been arbitrarily manacled by power-mad governor and mayors, though the pandemic over-reach seemed to be a perfect battleground for the once non-partisan and idealistic group.
However, once Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spearheaded a much-needed revision of Title IX designed to protect the due process rights of male students accused of sexual misconduct on campus, the ACLU sprung into action—to try to block her.
It is hard for me to imagine how any objective reader could peruse the revised federal guidelines on how sexual assault allegations should be handled on college and K-12 campuses and conclude that they are hostile to the Bill of Rights in any way. Nevertheless, the federal lawsuit filed yesterday, with the backing of the ACLU, claims the changes would “inflict significant harm” on victims and “dramatically undermine” the civil rights of accusers—you know, those women who must be believed when they want men to be punished.
The suit was filed on behalf of four advocacy groups for such women, including Know Your IX and Girls for Gender Equity. The objective is to block the Education Department’s fixes, made necessary by the Obama Education Department’s unethical “Dear Colleague” letter that threatened universities with the loss of funds and other sanctions if they didn’t make it easier for women to get male students kicked out of school in she said/he said disputes. The reform regulations will go into effect by August 14 unless they are rejected by the courts.
The rules championed by DeVos bolster the due process rights of those accused of sexual assault and harassment, allowing for live hearings and cross-examinations.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York-based law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, is Orwellian. “This new federal effort to weaken Title IX makes it more difficult for victims of sexual harassment or sexual assault to continue their educations and needlessly comes amid a global pandemic.”
What does the pandemic have to do with anything? I guess it’s because the ACLU had a retreat or something and decided that the Wuhan virus suspended civil liberties. Says Yahoo!,
Advocates for sexual misconduct suspects and some civil liberties organizations have argued that the guidance under the Obama administration was too loose and didn’t properly afford the accused a presumption of innocence or hold schools to a standard of impartiality.
Ya think? Instead of a reasonable doubt standard, the Obama soft edict (‘Nice little college you have there. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it…’) demanded a preponderance of the evidence standard but did not require such basic elements as the opportunity to cross-examine accusers and to be represented by a lawyer. The reputations and educational opportunities of young citizens are at stake, and such consequences are far closer to what criminal defendants face than what is at stake in most civil trials. Using the reasonable doubt standard constitutes basic fairness and due process. The Obama “Dear Colleague Letter” was a sop thrown to the Democratic Party’s militant feminist base that became an even more powerful force as the #MeToo movement accelerated.
Now, of course, it may be possible for students accused of sexual harassment and assault to avoid discipline by proving they are Democrats and promising that they will vocally oppose President Trump on campus.
Angela Morabito, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said yesterday that the final rule only codifies guidelines that hold schools to the same standards and ensures “no survivor is brushed aside and no accused student’s guilt is predetermined.” She added,
“The ACLU, which used to defend civil liberties, should be supporting such an approach.Instead, they’re helping schools trample on basic due process and gut protections for survivors to serve an ideological agenda where the ends justify the means.”
Exactly. The lawsuit shows that the United States of America no longer has an organization that exists to prevent governments from imposing its objectives on citizens at the cost of their basic liberties.
Someone should start one.
Ethics Alarms 
There’s an old joke in the gun owning communities that if you were to ask the ACLU to count to ten, you’d get “1, 4, 5, 6…”. I believe even the ACLU website’s FAQ at the time explained that rights that weren’t incorporated didn’t need defending… Which actually is an odd chicken and egg problem if you think of it.
I guess now that the 2A has officially been incorporated against the states, the ACLU has entirely abandoned counting.
Well, with this latest action, the sixth has joined the second in “uncountable” amendments
I have to ask again, as I always do when this topic comes up, why are schools investigating these things anyway? We’re talking about actual crimes here, for fuck’s sake. We have police and district attorneys and an entire court system for that. We’re not talking about breaking a dress code, we’re talking about sexual assaults and rape. If a student was murdered on campus, would the school be in charge of that investigation, too? The whole thing is utter insanity.
That’s been my position all along. The victim can continue the education they were there for while the perp rots in jail.
I see it as analogous to a company investigating a report of sexual assault. The police should be involved if there is a criminal element to the allegation, but the company has a right and even an obligation to do an internal investigation and potentially reprimand or dismiss employees who violated their policies in some way, even if it is non-criminal or the evidence does not support those standards in a criminal investigation. The school still needs to investigate.
I think the issue here is that often these things do not rise to the level of criminal misconduct yet still violates some policy that might get you expelled or disciplined in some way. If we are talking about criminal conduct being handled only by the school then I agree this is rather problematic, criminal conduct should be investigated by the police, not schools. I am not so sure that schools are investigating criminal conduct so much as policy violations.
No matter what happens with a schools investigation, they do not have the power to incarcerate someone. The most that is going to happen is someone is going to get expelled. Now, there might be some Due Process issues with expelling someone on this lesser standard, and I do think that several universities have paid this price in lawsuits directly because of the “Dear Colleague” letter, where it has been found that the schools were disciplining staff and students without appropriate due process, I suppose there are potential defamation implications here as well.
Current systems act as a giant rug under which to sweep potentially criminal behavior on campuses. It is not a given that crimes will be reported to police at all. In colleges and universities, and reaching as far back as elementary schools, ed systems and districts have their ways keep dirty laundry from being aired.
The organizations have motives for suppressing criminal incidents, and are diligent and practiced in this regard. Employees, students and parents get the message soon enough.
It appears that people are starting organizations. But freedom of speech is now a “conservative” position.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2020/04/16/coronavirus-wisconsin-sheriff-threatened-jail-over-instagram-post/5145087002/
Notice how the organization suing on first amendment grounds is labeled “conservative.” Fourty years ago this would have been the bread and butter ACLU case. Today they’re silent and a “conservative” organization is fighting for the first amendment.
You said:
It is hard for me to imagine how any objective reader could peruse the revised federal guidelines on how sexual assault allegations should be handled on college and K-12 campuses and conclude that they are hostile to the Bill of Rights in any way.
Indeed, such a position is both incomprehensible and would seem to be untenable, except we know it somehow isn’t.
Perhaps that’s why the were offered in Maryland, in order to get in front of a sympathetic judge and a slightly leftish 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. They stand a decent chance to obtain an injunction and have it sustained for years, if they get lucky in the appellate draw.
You said: What does the pandemic have to do with anything?
The case needs as much emotion as possible, since it’s substance is fatally flawed. That increases the chance a left-leaning judge will find in their favor. It is the equivalent of the left “…pound[ing] the table and yell[ing] like hell.”
You said:
Exactly. The lawsuit shows that the United States of America no longer has an organization that exists to prevent governments from imposing its objectives on citizens at the cost of their basic liberties.
Someone should start one.
Well, we have good organizations defending the First and Second amendments. The rest, sadly, are left to stand on their own. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and the judge will stand up for them and not “If only one child …”
My favorite is the wag who pointed out that if Biden were held to his own Title IX standards, he’d be toast long before now!
There are two complaints in the ACLU post that aren’t completely bogus. 90% bogus maybe?
Changing the “severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive” to “severe, pervasive, AND objectively offensive”. I can see a reason for complaint there, if they are correct that in all other cases it’s “or”.
Requiring complaints to be brought to a particular individual. This is set up so students can avoid a full investigation if they so choose… but that could also be handled by explicitly giving them that option. As it is, depending on whether other officials will reliable redirect to the correct one, there is some ability for schools to drop a case without the complainant being aware. However, this goes back to the question about why schools are investigating crimes at all. And I’m not at all convinced they’ve summed up the rules fairly.
I take issue with the bogus statistics they use in the first paragraph to pretend sexual harassment is more common than it really is.
He would have been fine if he had my life philosophy too.
When in doubt, shut the fuck up.
You said someone should start one – meaning a new civil liberites organization.
See Harmeet Dillon. She has created a new org to fight civil liberties issues. She is representing 500,000 barbers and beauticians fighting Newsome’s edicts
Correction. Her last name is spelled Dhillon.
The org is Center for American Liberty.