The new Title IX rules will provide more protections for those accused of sexual misconduct, and eliminate LGBT protections adopted under Biden.
Donald Trump rammed through new Title IX rules for federally funded K-12 schools and colleges Friday—dramatically changing how they deal with sex assault claims and LGBT students.
It was the latest in his sweeping executive actions, and reshapes how educators have to interpret Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs.
The new policy, announced on Friday, resuscitates the Title IX policy changes Trump implemented in 2018 during his first term. It reduces the liability placed on schools in sexual misconduct cases. It also requires live hearings and cross-examinations, and allows lawyers to be present at those hearings.
The Biden administration extended sex discrimination protections under Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Trump informed educational institutions that his administration would no longer enforce those protections. This followed a Kentucky judge’s decision in January that ruled Biden-era trans protections unconstitutional.
Trump’s order included language to justify his decision not to utilize the traditional and protracted process to make new rules. The letter stated, “the president’s interpretation of the law governs because he alone controls and supervises subordinate officers” in the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which enforces the rules.
Title IX, which was established in 1972, has been celebrated for propping up women’s sports, eliminating sex-based bans on college admissions at federally funded schools, and working to end sex discrimination on campus.
Some have been highly critical of new interpretations of the law that began during the Obama administration. They argue those new Title IX rules resulted in the creation of “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces,” and investigations that undermined free speech and academic freedom on campus.
Tyler Coward, a lead counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil liberties group, celebrated Trump’s ruling, saying it “ensures that all students—whether they are the accused or the accuser—will receive fair treatment and important procedural safeguards.”
Emma Grasso Levine, a Know Your IX senior manager, described the decision as “incredibly disappointing” and claimed it “will leave many survivors of sexual violence, LGBTQ+ students, and pregnant and parenting students without” vital accommodations.
Trump Orders Schools to Ease Sex Assault Rules
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Trump Orders Schools to Ease Sex Assault Rules
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-ord ... uct-rules/
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Re: Trump Orders Schools to Ease Sex Assault Rules
Perhaps related to this?: https://www.courthousenews.com/prosecut ... der-trump/
“If the present pace of such prosecutions continues, the fiscal 2019 total will be 162, compared to 221 last year,” TRAC’s report states.
The Obama administration dramatically ramped up such prosecutions, climbing threefold from 85 cases in 2009, the year the 44th president took office, to more than 260 during his final year in the White House.
While those prosecutions held steady in the first year under President Donald Trump, TRAC’s analysis of Justice Department data says they have taken a dramatic plunge every year since.
“Compared to five years ago, the estimate of FY 2019 prosecutions of this type is down 32.2 percent, from 239,” the study says. “However, prosecutions over the past year are still much higher than they were ten years ago, up 90.6 percent from the 85 reported in 2009.”
Before criticism over the deal ended his tenure, Acosta pushed policies at the Department of Labor that pushed to divert resources from the mission of combating human trafficking. TRAC notes that individual U.S. attorneys have discretion over which cases to bring, but that prosecutors have increasingly declined referrals of cases involving child sex trafficking.
“When all referrals for federal prosecution for sex trafficking of children are examined, U.S. attorneys have generally turned down slightly more than half,” the study states. “In the last full year of the Obama Administration, federal prosecutors prosecuted 49 percent of these referrals. This percentage has been slipping since: during FY 2017 it was 46 percent and in FY 2018 it was 42 percent. So far in this fiscal year, Justice Department records show that the rate has fallen to 39 percent.”
First issued in the year 2003, the T-visa program was designed to provide sex-trafficking survivors four years of legal status, food stamps, job training and a pathway for their families to immigrate to the United States.
Such protections had been crucial to recruit witnesses against sex traffickers, who may be waiting to kill victims and their loved ones in their countries of origin.
“If all they see is death, they will stop cooperating,” the prosecutor said, referring to the witnesses.
For the prosecutor, such a Sophie’s choice was not an abstraction.
“I have specific memories of specific girls and women who were petrified that their families would be killed if they turned up on the witness stand,” the prosecutor said, emphasizing the need to make them feel protected. “That is the key to having witnesses: No witness, no cases.”
Before his resignation, Acosta’s Labor Department threw up hurdles to limit authority to certify visas and proposed an 80% budget cut to the International Labor Affairs Bureau, charged with combating human trafficking and child labor domestically and internationally.
House Democrats drafted a proposal on May 15 that would expand the program’s funding from $68 million to $122 million.
Defend the beauty! This is your only office. Defend the dream that is in you!
- Gabriele d'Annunzio
- Gabriele d'Annunzio