Title IX
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It’s not every day that any U.S. senator – much less 19 of them – denounce the presumption of innocence. Or describe hearings with cross-examination, hallmarks of both the criminal justice and the congressional oversight systems, as “wholly unnecessary to determine what happened in a particular incident.”
Those remarks came in a seven-page comment released from the senators in question, all of them Democrats, in response to new Title IX regulations proposed by the current administration, which already dramatically scale back procedural protections for accused students. Their ranks included respected moderates such as Amy Klobuchar and Jack Reed, as well as civil libertarians like Ron Wyden.
That many politicians are fair-weather friends of civil liberties is old news. But for students who face a campus adjudication, the consequences of this almost cavalier dismissal of basic fairness is troubling.
The proposed regulations, by contrast, would revoke not only the right of accused (and accusing) students to see and hear live witness testimony and cross-examine witnesses and the other party through an advisor, but also to receive a full record of the evidence. Schools also will be allowed to impose interim punishments on accused students based solely on an allegation.
In virtually any other context, this erosion of core procedural protections would have generated alarm, even outrage, from senators who have otherwise passionately defended civil liberties for the accused in debates over criminal justice reform. Here, however, the senators’ only complaint is that the administration did not go far enough.
The 19 senators contended that presuming accused students innocent “perpetuates the harmful and false stereotypes that those who report sex-based harassment are being untruthful.” Their “evidence” for this startling conclusion was based on irrelevant studies – and their logic would undermine core American principles that those accused of crimes outside a campus setting are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
