‘It was this type of overreach that the American people repudiated’
Congressional leaders who have long criticized the Obama administration for the Department of Education’s perceived overreach are promising big changes under a Trump administration.
That includes pressing for a leader of the Office for Civil Rights who will “stop the practice of using the office as an unchecked regulatory entity,” Republican Sen. James Lankford, who chairs the regulatory affairs subcommittee, told The College Fix in an email.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, the new chair of the House Education Committee, has said she has even grander designs: “to see the [entire] department scaled back.”
Advocates for the department’s current methods, including a sweeping interpretation of Title IX that micromanages how colleges handle sexual-misconduct complaints, have already tried to thwart anticipated changes.
They are speaking out against President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary, Betsy DeVos, for her donations to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a vocal critic of the department’s sexual-misconduct “guidance.”
Republicans will ‘put a stop to this abuse’
Under the Obama administration, the department used alternate means to issue de facto regulations to colleges without going through the required rulemaking process, according to critics.
“Some of the most egregious examples of executive overreach and intimidation” took place at the department, “and I believe it was this type of overreach that the American people repudiated in this election,” Lankford told The Fix.
Administration officials “have abused ‘Dear Colleague’ letters and ‘guidance documents’ to mandate policies for schools without adhering to legally-required regulatory processes,” he said.
Lankford’s top priority for Trump’s incoming department is the appointment of an Office for Civil Rights director who understands and abides by proper regulatory processes.
“The new leader of the Department of Education, and especially the Office [for] Civil Rights, must restore the action of the office to their original construct and stop the practice of using the office as an unchecked regulatory entity,” he said: Unified Republican governance should “put a stop to this abuse.”
‘Very little tolerance’ for huge student loans
Incoming Chairman Foxx, a former college president with a Ph.D. in higher education, has been vocal in speaking against the federal government’s intrusion into states’ decisions on education policy.
After Trump’s election, she told Inside Higher Ed that the new Congress will “have a lot of emphasis on oversight,” but said she wanted “some really, really competent people” who will investigate “what’s going on” in the department from the inside.
Asked about the rumors that the Trump administration will eliminate or scale back the department’s reach, Foxx said: “I definitely see the opportunity to see the department scaled back,” in particular by devolving its functions to the state and local level.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Foxx wants to torpedo an Obama rule (currently blocked by a federal judge) that “would make more salaried employees on college campuses and elsewhere eligible for overtime pay.”
She also wants to eliminate regulations on for-profit colleges and teacher-prep programs. Those regulations also bailed out student victims of fraud with taxpayer dollars.
Foxx once told a radio program she has “very little tolerance” for students taking out large loan amounts and their consequent dependence on the government. She is an advocate for early-college programs to save both students and governments money, as well as encouraging students to explore vocational training.
Foxx’s office responded to an initial Fix inquiry but did not provide a staffer to answer questions.
Uncertain future for speech codes
One of the open questions about a Trump presidency is how colleges might modify their speech codes in response.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte asked colleges in August 2015, and again in February 2016, to tell him how they are promoting “free and open expression” and bringing campus policies in line with the First Amendment.
MORE: Universities keep Congress waiting as they scramble to overhaul speech codes
He targeted 160 colleges slapped with a “red light” rating by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, meaning they have “at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.”
In his second letter, Goodlatte targeted 33 colleges that had not responded a full six months after his deadline.
Goodlatte’s office did not return multiple emails and voicemails sent by The Fix seeking an update on his effort.
No excuse for violating due process without ‘guidance’
DeVos, Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, is best known for her philanthropy related to education reform in Michigan and charter-school expansion. She has also supported reform in Florida and Michigan, as well as the school-voucher movement.
But in the higher education realm, observers are focused on how she might change federal rules on disciplinary proceedings for sexual-misconduct allegations.
“Many believe” a DeVos-led department will get rid of the Office for Civil Rights’ 2011 guidance document on the subject, Inside Higher Ed reported.
That document, portrayed as nonbinding, told colleges to use a low evidence standard and abandon common protections given to the accused in civil-court settings, such as the right to cross-examination.
MORE: Senate chairman orders OCR to ‘immediately rein in’ Title IX ‘abuses‘
If it’s junked, colleges won’t be able to cite the guidance if they are sued by students who allege they were deprived of due process in campus proceedings.
Higher education legal consultant Gary Pavela told Inside Higher Ed that it was wrong for OCR to have “transformed that floor into a ceiling,” referring to the “preponderance” evidence standard mandated by the guidance.
Choosing an evidence standard “should be based [on] our own campus-based analysis and experience,” not dicates from Washington, he said. But as long as “other reasonable due process standards are applied,” colleges can probably continue using preponderance without “legal risk.”
Colleges won’t miss the 2011 guidance, if previous comments by the American Council on Education are any indication.
The group, which represents 1,800 college presidents at the federal level, last year called OCR “a Court of Star Chamber, with arbitrary rulings, no rights for those under investigation and a secret process” governing schools who fall under Title IX investigation.
Source
Let's thank Senator James Lankford for standing up for men who's due process rights are being violated. You can call his office at (202)224-5754 or you can email him here. Let's thank him for pursuing this as he has. The more of us he hears from the better so let's contact him right away.
Showing posts with label senator james Lankford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label senator james Lankford. Show all posts
Friday, January 13, 2017
Sunday, December 4, 2016
Let's tell Donald Trump to dismantle Dear Colleague
I was at the Community Of The Wrongly Accused or COTWA and I was reading how Donald Trump is going to dismantle the Office of Civil Rights division of the Department Of Education. A lot of publications and organizations are bringing this to the forefront. Among them are Inside Higher Ed,Weekly Standard,Buzz Feed and Vox. This is a good thing if you are an MRA or you actually care about due process for the accused. I thank them for bring these issues to the forefront so the rest of country and planet can see what goes on at America's Universities and Colleges. Contacting Senators Lamar Alexander and James Lankford was a good idea. They are pressing on this with the tenacity of a pit bull. Congress has the power to yank the DOE's funding and with the Republicans running Congress that is a safe bet. Donald Trump has a Twitter account so let's contact him there and let him know what we think on this subject.
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Tell your college alma mater and/or elected officials about victim centered investigations on college and university campuses
From SAVE Services:
A new trend called "victim-centered investigations" is troubling us at SAVE.
The gist of the new investigatory approach is to start from believing the complainant and to continue the investigation from the complainant's perspective--thus ending the police's role as neutral fact-finder.
Colleges are starting to look into using this technique, and we need stop it.
We are asking you to contact the university or college where you attended school, and ask them to continue implementing fair investigative procedures.
Tell them to preserve the presumption of innocence on their campus.
If you didn't attend college or do not want to contact your alma mater then contact your elected officials. Congressional Representative:click here and Senators: click here. You can also contact Senator James Lankford and Senator Lamar Alexander. Neither of the aforementioned Senators are big fans of what the Obama administration is doing to college and university men so contacting them would be a plus. On Lankford's website click on "send an email on legislation" to send him an email.
A new trend called "victim-centered investigations" is troubling us at SAVE.
The gist of the new investigatory approach is to start from believing the complainant and to continue the investigation from the complainant's perspective--thus ending the police's role as neutral fact-finder.
Colleges are starting to look into using this technique, and we need stop it.
We are asking you to contact the university or college where you attended school, and ask them to continue implementing fair investigative procedures.
Tell them to preserve the presumption of innocence on their campus.
If you didn't attend college or do not want to contact your alma mater then contact your elected officials. Congressional Representative:click here and Senators: click here. You can also contact Senator James Lankford and Senator Lamar Alexander. Neither of the aforementioned Senators are big fans of what the Obama administration is doing to college and university men so contacting them would be a plus. On Lankford's website click on "send an email on legislation" to send him an email.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Due process is still being kicked off campus
Academia’s descent into perpetual hysteria and incipient tyranny is partly fueled by the fiction that 1 in 5 college students is sexually assaulted and that campuses require minute federal supervision to cure this. Encouraged by the government’s misuse of discredited social science (one survey supposedly proving this 1-in-5 fiction), colleges and universities are implementing unconstitutional procedures mandated by the government.
The 2006 Duke lacrosse rape case fit the narrative about campuses permeated by a “rape culture.” Except there was no rape. In 2014, the University of Virginia was convulsed by a magazine’s lurid report of a rape that buttressed the narrative that fraternities foment the sexual predation supposedly pandemic in “male supremacist” America. Except there was no rape. Now, Colorado State University at Pueblo has punished the supposed rapist of a woman who says she was not raped.
Grant Neal, a CSU Pueblo pre-med major and athlete, began a relationship with Jane Doe (as identified in Neal’s lawsuit), although she, as a student in the Athletic Training Program, was not supposed to fraternize with athletes. Jane Doe texted an invitation to Neal to come to her apartment. The following is from Neal’s complaint against CSU Pueblo:
“As the intimacy progressed, knowing that they both wanted to engage in sexual intercourse, Jane Doe advised Plaintiff that she was not on birth control. Accordingly, Plaintiff asked if he should put on a condom. Jane Doe clearly and unequivocally responded ‘yes.’ . . . They proceeded to engage in consensual sexual intercourse, during which Jane Doe . . . demonstrated her enjoyment both verbally and non-verbally.”
The next day, one of Jane Doe’s classmates, who neither witnessed nor was told of any assault, noticed a hickey on the woman’s neck. Assuming an assault must have happened, the classmate told school officials that an assault had occurred. Jane Doe told school officials the sex was consensual: “I’m fine and I wasn’t raped.” Neal’s lawsuit says she told an administrator: “Our stories are the same and he’s a good guy. He’s not a rapist, he’s not a criminal, it’s not even worth any of this hoopla!” Neal recorded on his cellphone Jane Doe saying that nothing improper had transpired, and soon the two again had intercourse.
Undeterred, CSU Pueblo mixed hearsay evidence with multiple due process violations, thereby ruining a young man’s present (he has been suspended from the school for as long as Jane Doe is there) and blighting his future (his prospects for admission to another school are bleak).
Title IX of the Education Amendments enacted in 1972 merely says no person at an institution receiving federal funds shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of sex. From this the government has concocted a right to micromanage schools’ disciplinary procedures, mandating obvious violations of due process.
In 2011, the Education Department’s civil rights office sent “dear colleague” letters to schools directing them to convict accused persons on a mere “preponderance” of evidence rather than “clear and convincing” evidence. Schools were instructed to not allow accused students to cross-examine their accusers, but to allow accusers to appeal not-guilty verdicts, a form of double jeopardy.
Although a “dear colleague” letter is supposedly a mere “guidance document,” it employs the word “must” in effectively mandating policies. While purporting to just “interpret” Title IX, these letters shred constitutional guarantees. And the letters evade the legal requirement that such significant rulemaking must be subject to comment hearings open to a properly notified public. Even were CSU Pueblo inclined to resist such dictates — academic administrators nowadays are frequently supine when challenged — it would risk a costly investigation and the potential loss of the 11 percent of its budget that comes from Washington.
The Chronicle of Higher Education says the case raises this “intriguing” question: “What responsibility does a college have to move ahead with a third-party complaint if the supposed victim says she consented?” This question, which in a calmer time would have a self-evident answer, will be explored in Neal’s lawsuit. It should reveal what the school thought of Jane Doe’s statement exculpating Neal, who says a school official “brushed off” the recording and said that Jane Doe said what she said “just because she was scared of you.” Neal’s lawyer says he suspects that Jane Doe might now be intimating something “inappropriate” and is perhaps scared of losing her place in the Athletic Training Program.
CSU Pueblo should be scared of joining those schools that have lost lawsuits filed by students denied due process. Such suits are remedial education for educators ignorant of constitutional guarantees.
Source
Several distinguished law professors have spoken up protesting "Dear Colleague". "Dear Colleague" has its critics in the Senate. Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator James Lankford are not big fans of "Dear Colleague" so let's let them know. Demand that Catherine Lhamon be brought up on criminal charges.
The 2006 Duke lacrosse rape case fit the narrative about campuses permeated by a “rape culture.” Except there was no rape. In 2014, the University of Virginia was convulsed by a magazine’s lurid report of a rape that buttressed the narrative that fraternities foment the sexual predation supposedly pandemic in “male supremacist” America. Except there was no rape. Now, Colorado State University at Pueblo has punished the supposed rapist of a woman who says she was not raped.
Grant Neal, a CSU Pueblo pre-med major and athlete, began a relationship with Jane Doe (as identified in Neal’s lawsuit), although she, as a student in the Athletic Training Program, was not supposed to fraternize with athletes. Jane Doe texted an invitation to Neal to come to her apartment. The following is from Neal’s complaint against CSU Pueblo:
“As the intimacy progressed, knowing that they both wanted to engage in sexual intercourse, Jane Doe advised Plaintiff that she was not on birth control. Accordingly, Plaintiff asked if he should put on a condom. Jane Doe clearly and unequivocally responded ‘yes.’ . . . They proceeded to engage in consensual sexual intercourse, during which Jane Doe . . . demonstrated her enjoyment both verbally and non-verbally.”
The next day, one of Jane Doe’s classmates, who neither witnessed nor was told of any assault, noticed a hickey on the woman’s neck. Assuming an assault must have happened, the classmate told school officials that an assault had occurred. Jane Doe told school officials the sex was consensual: “I’m fine and I wasn’t raped.” Neal’s lawsuit says she told an administrator: “Our stories are the same and he’s a good guy. He’s not a rapist, he’s not a criminal, it’s not even worth any of this hoopla!” Neal recorded on his cellphone Jane Doe saying that nothing improper had transpired, and soon the two again had intercourse.
Undeterred, CSU Pueblo mixed hearsay evidence with multiple due process violations, thereby ruining a young man’s present (he has been suspended from the school for as long as Jane Doe is there) and blighting his future (his prospects for admission to another school are bleak).
Title IX of the Education Amendments enacted in 1972 merely says no person at an institution receiving federal funds shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of sex. From this the government has concocted a right to micromanage schools’ disciplinary procedures, mandating obvious violations of due process.
In 2011, the Education Department’s civil rights office sent “dear colleague” letters to schools directing them to convict accused persons on a mere “preponderance” of evidence rather than “clear and convincing” evidence. Schools were instructed to not allow accused students to cross-examine their accusers, but to allow accusers to appeal not-guilty verdicts, a form of double jeopardy.
Although a “dear colleague” letter is supposedly a mere “guidance document,” it employs the word “must” in effectively mandating policies. While purporting to just “interpret” Title IX, these letters shred constitutional guarantees. And the letters evade the legal requirement that such significant rulemaking must be subject to comment hearings open to a properly notified public. Even were CSU Pueblo inclined to resist such dictates — academic administrators nowadays are frequently supine when challenged — it would risk a costly investigation and the potential loss of the 11 percent of its budget that comes from Washington.
The Chronicle of Higher Education says the case raises this “intriguing” question: “What responsibility does a college have to move ahead with a third-party complaint if the supposed victim says she consented?” This question, which in a calmer time would have a self-evident answer, will be explored in Neal’s lawsuit. It should reveal what the school thought of Jane Doe’s statement exculpating Neal, who says a school official “brushed off” the recording and said that Jane Doe said what she said “just because she was scared of you.” Neal’s lawyer says he suspects that Jane Doe might now be intimating something “inappropriate” and is perhaps scared of losing her place in the Athletic Training Program.
CSU Pueblo should be scared of joining those schools that have lost lawsuits filed by students denied due process. Such suits are remedial education for educators ignorant of constitutional guarantees.
Source
Several distinguished law professors have spoken up protesting "Dear Colleague". "Dear Colleague" has its critics in the Senate. Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator James Lankford are not big fans of "Dear Colleague" so let's let them know. Demand that Catherine Lhamon be brought up on criminal charges.
Monday, April 25, 2016
The Georgia lawmaker taking on "dear colleauge" and the female bureaucrat who thought she was a queen
A Georgia lawmaker is suing the federal government on behalf of taxpayers for what he calls "illegal and unconstitutional directives" from the Education Department.
Republican State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, who chairs the influential Georgia House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education, filed the lawsuit along with his wife, alleging the federal government violated the Administrative Procedure Act when they issued a "guidance document" that included onerous new regulations for schools to follow. If schools fail to abide by the Department's Office for Civil Rights' ever-changing guidance, they risk losing federal funding.
Ehrhart has been a vocal critic of the Department's "Dear Colleague" letters, which began forcing colleges to spend more and more money to adjudicate felonies in 2011. In January, Ehrhart told school administrators: "If you don't protect the students of this state with due process, don't come looking for money." It was the strongest statement yet on the issue from a legislator.
In his lawsuit, Ehrhart claims the 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter imposed "unnecessary costs and expenses that flow directly to both Federal and Georgia Taxpayers, including Plaintiffs, under the threat of Federal funding being revoked for the schools' failure to comply."
"The illegal and unconstitutional directives issued in the Obama Administration's 'Dear Colleague' letter have resulted in a clear disregard for the due process rights of male college students and fostered an environment of male gender bias on campuses throughout the country," Ehrhart said in a press release. "As Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education, I have seen firsthand how colleges and universities, intimidated by [the Education Department's Office for Civil Right's] threat to their federal funding, have set up kangaroo court systems to comply with the Obama Administration's unconstitutional policies."
He added: "It is unacceptable that state and federal taxpayers in this country continue to fund these mandates and their attendant costs at higher education institutions."
The 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter demanded that schools adopt processes that make it easier to find accused students culpable without affording them much chance to defend themselves. Schools aren't required to allow them legal representation and lack subpoena power to obtain relevant evidence; and it's up to the schools what evidence is "relevant" or "exculpatory," meaning oftentimes accused students aren't made aware of evidence that could exonerate them.
It's all due to the Obama administration's agenda on looking tough when it comes to sexual assault. The belief that women are oppressed and victimized at large numbers in this country permeates the administration, and it has introduced policies that take self-reported, manipulated surveys as fact and eviscerates due process rights in pursuit of ending a non-existent "epidemic."
Ehrhart and his wife claim they have standing to sue as taxpayers of the state, who help fund the colleges and universities. The Ehrharts are also deeply concerned about the policies forced upon colleges because they have a son enrolled in the Georgia Institute of Technology, a school that has a horrendous track record on sexual misconduct accusations.
Ehrhart is represented by Andrew Miltenberg, Jeffrey Berkowitz and Tara Davis of Nesenoff Miltenberg Goddard Laskowitz, LLP and Jonathan Hawkins of Krevolin & Horst, LLC. Miltenberg is also representing a former Colorado State University-Pueblo student who was suspended for multiple years (essentially expelled) for sexual misconduct even though his alleged victim said she wasn't raped. The student in that case is also suing the Education Department.
"It is our hope that his case, together with the Grant Neal case (commenced earlier this week), have cornered the OCR, highlighting its abuses and providing a compelling narrative as we try to dismantle the OCR's continued assault on the rights of young men," Miltenberg told the Washington Examiner in an email.
Ehrhart told the Examiner that if he got the "right panel" on the Georgia court where his lawsuit was filed, "we could be in very good shape." And if they lose, he said, "we'll appeal. We'll take this right up to the Supreme Court."
Source
This is a man. Earl Ehrhart is perhaps one of the last of the men left in government. A brave man that is taking on the feminist juggernaut. Fine,we will stand beside him and let him know that there are men standing beside him. That we at the Men's Rights Blog stand with him and wish him the best as he rights this wrong and restores and gets justice for the wrongfully accused men whom this suggestion "dear colleague" has destroyed. In fact let's tell him ourselves: earl.ehrhart@house.ga.gov The more of us he hears from the better so let's let him know we appreciate what he is doing. After all he is doing this on our behalf as well so let's let him know today.
There is a second take on this story:
Georgia lawmaker sues Department of Ed officials for exceeding authority in campus rape rules
Greg Piper - Associate Editor •April 22, 2016
Our son could be ‘wrongly accused and found responsible’
The Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have harmed not only students but their parents and taxpayers by enforcing unlawful rules in campus sexual-misconduct investigations, according to a lawsuit by a Georgia lawmaker.
State Rep. Earl Ehrhart chairs the Georgia House subcommittee that controls the purse for the state’s public colleges and universities, and he has used his position to pressure schools to restore due-process rights, with some success.
But in the suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Ehrhart and his wife Victoria spoke as parents of a son enrolled at Georgia Tech.
They have “heard countless stories of young men being accused, investigated, and subsequently expelled from Georgia colleges and universities without being provided appropriate due process protections,” owing to OCR’s 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges, the suit says.
They are “concerned that in the current regulatory climate” their son could, “like any other male college student, be wrongly accused and found responsible under the directives imposed by the Dear Colleague Letter.”
‘Imperative language’ means it is intended to be enforced
The Ehrharts’ lawsuit names Education Secretary John King and OCR chief Catherine Lhamon as defendants, as well as the agencies they lead and the United States government itself.
It was filed by the same lawyer, Andrew Miltenberg, who earlier this week sued Colorado State University-Pueblo on behalf of a male student who was functionally expelled for a sexual encounter that his partner has repeatedly said was not rape. That suit also named Department of Ed officials.
The core of the suit is that OCR did not follow the proper regulatory procedure in issuing substantive new rules, including the use of an “excessively low” evidence standard and the discouragement of cross-examination, while threatening the federal funding of schools that didn’t comply.
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires a notice-and-comment rulemaking for any substantive rules, which are often marked by “imperative language” such as “must,” the suit says. It points to the repeated use of “should,” “must,” “requires” and “strongly” throughout the letter.
When OCR’s Lhamon was challenged on the letter’s legality by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. and chair of the Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee, she claimed the Dear Colleague was “interpretive” because the Title IX statute went through notice-and-comment 44 years ago, the suit says.
All decisions from the past five years are ‘arbitrary and void’
The Ehrharts are calling for “all disciplinary decisions arising” from the Dear Colleague letter – five years of misconduct findings from proceedings that were tailored to OCR’s demands – to be rendered “unconstitutional, arbitrary and void.”
The 2011 letter “was not, in practice or effect, a genuine guidance document” that carries no force of law, because it “coerced the schools’ compliance” with rules that were not implemented in the last rulemaking in 2001.
Because it set up “quasi-legal” proceedings that “violate many civil liberties,” the Dear Colleague has become “a highly divisive document, criticized by law professors, lawyers, educators, journalists, civil liberties groups and members of Congress,” the suit says.
The Ehrharts argued that the Department of Ed and OCR couldn’t avoid judicial review, as provided by the APA, by simply calling the Dear Colleague a guidance document.
The letter “is a final agency action in that it is the consummation of the agency’s decision-making and has been carried out as binding law since its adoption in 2011,” with “direct legal consequences” for institutions that do not comply.
The suit notes that Lhamon has repeatedly said in public settings that she expects colleges to follow the 2011 letter and “I will enforce” it – a threat made good when Tufts University “balked” at agreeing to an OCR finding that its policies suddenly violated Title IX in 2014.
Georgia taxpayers and academic programs are threatened
Those threats have forced all Georgia public colleges to create Title IX enforcement offices and hire personnel, costing them millions of dollars, to avoid the risk that their federal funding could be cut – with taxpayers hit and academic programs slashed as a result, the suit says.
It contrasts the multi-billion dollar endowments of Ivy League schools that have each hired dozens of Title IX staff in response to the Dear Colleague, with the endowments of Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, which are “a shadow of their Ivy League peers.”
The suit notes Ehrhart’s own subcommittee hearings into how state schools handle sexual-misconduct investigations and says money can’t make students safer: The feds are demanding that colleges “micromanage the sex lives of students.”
The closest the suit gets to arguing that male students face inherent bias in post-Dear Colleague investigations – the core claim in lawyer Miltenberg’s CSU-Pueblo lawsuit – is its reference to the “rapid increase” in suits filed by students who were “wrongly disciplined.”
“Typically, these cases are brought by male students erroneously found responsible for sexual misconduct after being subjected to an arbitrary, biased and Kafkaesque investigation and adjudication,” it says.
Washington University Law Prof. John Banzhaf, who has called the 2011 Dear Colleague “unconstitutional,” said other states or municipalities could also challenge OCR in court by approving rules that contradict OCR’s, such as the right to cross-examination.
“Here it is not even clear that the [Title IX] statute authorized the Department of Education to have any involvement in the issue of rape complaints involving college students,” Banzhaf wrote in an email blast Thursday, “much less that it clearly intended to preempt any statutes individual states or municipalities might adopt. ”
Source
You know where this bitch came up with "dear colleague"? If it wasn't handed down to her then she reached as far up her ass as she could and pulled it out. It's not a law. It has no enforcement value yet she is acting like a smug little bitch about it. Let's see how smug she is with a congressional investigation looking up her ass. We'll see how smug she is then. Let's contact our Congressional representative and our Senators,especially Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator James Lankford. Let's teach this little bitch she can't just fuck with innocent men just because she feels like it.
Republican State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, who chairs the influential Georgia House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education, filed the lawsuit along with his wife, alleging the federal government violated the Administrative Procedure Act when they issued a "guidance document" that included onerous new regulations for schools to follow. If schools fail to abide by the Department's Office for Civil Rights' ever-changing guidance, they risk losing federal funding.
Ehrhart has been a vocal critic of the Department's "Dear Colleague" letters, which began forcing colleges to spend more and more money to adjudicate felonies in 2011. In January, Ehrhart told school administrators: "If you don't protect the students of this state with due process, don't come looking for money." It was the strongest statement yet on the issue from a legislator.
In his lawsuit, Ehrhart claims the 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter imposed "unnecessary costs and expenses that flow directly to both Federal and Georgia Taxpayers, including Plaintiffs, under the threat of Federal funding being revoked for the schools' failure to comply."
"The illegal and unconstitutional directives issued in the Obama Administration's 'Dear Colleague' letter have resulted in a clear disregard for the due process rights of male college students and fostered an environment of male gender bias on campuses throughout the country," Ehrhart said in a press release. "As Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education, I have seen firsthand how colleges and universities, intimidated by [the Education Department's Office for Civil Right's] threat to their federal funding, have set up kangaroo court systems to comply with the Obama Administration's unconstitutional policies."
He added: "It is unacceptable that state and federal taxpayers in this country continue to fund these mandates and their attendant costs at higher education institutions."
The 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter demanded that schools adopt processes that make it easier to find accused students culpable without affording them much chance to defend themselves. Schools aren't required to allow them legal representation and lack subpoena power to obtain relevant evidence; and it's up to the schools what evidence is "relevant" or "exculpatory," meaning oftentimes accused students aren't made aware of evidence that could exonerate them.
It's all due to the Obama administration's agenda on looking tough when it comes to sexual assault. The belief that women are oppressed and victimized at large numbers in this country permeates the administration, and it has introduced policies that take self-reported, manipulated surveys as fact and eviscerates due process rights in pursuit of ending a non-existent "epidemic."
Ehrhart and his wife claim they have standing to sue as taxpayers of the state, who help fund the colleges and universities. The Ehrharts are also deeply concerned about the policies forced upon colleges because they have a son enrolled in the Georgia Institute of Technology, a school that has a horrendous track record on sexual misconduct accusations.
Ehrhart is represented by Andrew Miltenberg, Jeffrey Berkowitz and Tara Davis of Nesenoff Miltenberg Goddard Laskowitz, LLP and Jonathan Hawkins of Krevolin & Horst, LLC. Miltenberg is also representing a former Colorado State University-Pueblo student who was suspended for multiple years (essentially expelled) for sexual misconduct even though his alleged victim said she wasn't raped. The student in that case is also suing the Education Department.
"It is our hope that his case, together with the Grant Neal case (commenced earlier this week), have cornered the OCR, highlighting its abuses and providing a compelling narrative as we try to dismantle the OCR's continued assault on the rights of young men," Miltenberg told the Washington Examiner in an email.
Ehrhart told the Examiner that if he got the "right panel" on the Georgia court where his lawsuit was filed, "we could be in very good shape." And if they lose, he said, "we'll appeal. We'll take this right up to the Supreme Court."
Source
This is a man. Earl Ehrhart is perhaps one of the last of the men left in government. A brave man that is taking on the feminist juggernaut. Fine,we will stand beside him and let him know that there are men standing beside him. That we at the Men's Rights Blog stand with him and wish him the best as he rights this wrong and restores and gets justice for the wrongfully accused men whom this suggestion "dear colleague" has destroyed. In fact let's tell him ourselves: earl.ehrhart@house.ga.gov The more of us he hears from the better so let's let him know we appreciate what he is doing. After all he is doing this on our behalf as well so let's let him know today.
There is a second take on this story:
Georgia lawmaker sues Department of Ed officials for exceeding authority in campus rape rules
Greg Piper - Associate Editor •April 22, 2016
Our son could be ‘wrongly accused and found responsible’
The Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have harmed not only students but their parents and taxpayers by enforcing unlawful rules in campus sexual-misconduct investigations, according to a lawsuit by a Georgia lawmaker.
State Rep. Earl Ehrhart chairs the Georgia House subcommittee that controls the purse for the state’s public colleges and universities, and he has used his position to pressure schools to restore due-process rights, with some success.
But in the suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Ehrhart and his wife Victoria spoke as parents of a son enrolled at Georgia Tech.
They have “heard countless stories of young men being accused, investigated, and subsequently expelled from Georgia colleges and universities without being provided appropriate due process protections,” owing to OCR’s 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges, the suit says.
They are “concerned that in the current regulatory climate” their son could, “like any other male college student, be wrongly accused and found responsible under the directives imposed by the Dear Colleague Letter.”
‘Imperative language’ means it is intended to be enforced
The Ehrharts’ lawsuit names Education Secretary John King and OCR chief Catherine Lhamon as defendants, as well as the agencies they lead and the United States government itself.
It was filed by the same lawyer, Andrew Miltenberg, who earlier this week sued Colorado State University-Pueblo on behalf of a male student who was functionally expelled for a sexual encounter that his partner has repeatedly said was not rape. That suit also named Department of Ed officials.
The core of the suit is that OCR did not follow the proper regulatory procedure in issuing substantive new rules, including the use of an “excessively low” evidence standard and the discouragement of cross-examination, while threatening the federal funding of schools that didn’t comply.
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires a notice-and-comment rulemaking for any substantive rules, which are often marked by “imperative language” such as “must,” the suit says. It points to the repeated use of “should,” “must,” “requires” and “strongly” throughout the letter.
When OCR’s Lhamon was challenged on the letter’s legality by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. and chair of the Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee, she claimed the Dear Colleague was “interpretive” because the Title IX statute went through notice-and-comment 44 years ago, the suit says.
All decisions from the past five years are ‘arbitrary and void’
The Ehrharts are calling for “all disciplinary decisions arising” from the Dear Colleague letter – five years of misconduct findings from proceedings that were tailored to OCR’s demands – to be rendered “unconstitutional, arbitrary and void.”
The 2011 letter “was not, in practice or effect, a genuine guidance document” that carries no force of law, because it “coerced the schools’ compliance” with rules that were not implemented in the last rulemaking in 2001.
Because it set up “quasi-legal” proceedings that “violate many civil liberties,” the Dear Colleague has become “a highly divisive document, criticized by law professors, lawyers, educators, journalists, civil liberties groups and members of Congress,” the suit says.
The Ehrharts argued that the Department of Ed and OCR couldn’t avoid judicial review, as provided by the APA, by simply calling the Dear Colleague a guidance document.
The letter “is a final agency action in that it is the consummation of the agency’s decision-making and has been carried out as binding law since its adoption in 2011,” with “direct legal consequences” for institutions that do not comply.
The suit notes that Lhamon has repeatedly said in public settings that she expects colleges to follow the 2011 letter and “I will enforce” it – a threat made good when Tufts University “balked” at agreeing to an OCR finding that its policies suddenly violated Title IX in 2014.
Georgia taxpayers and academic programs are threatened
Those threats have forced all Georgia public colleges to create Title IX enforcement offices and hire personnel, costing them millions of dollars, to avoid the risk that their federal funding could be cut – with taxpayers hit and academic programs slashed as a result, the suit says.
It contrasts the multi-billion dollar endowments of Ivy League schools that have each hired dozens of Title IX staff in response to the Dear Colleague, with the endowments of Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, which are “a shadow of their Ivy League peers.”
The suit notes Ehrhart’s own subcommittee hearings into how state schools handle sexual-misconduct investigations and says money can’t make students safer: The feds are demanding that colleges “micromanage the sex lives of students.”
The closest the suit gets to arguing that male students face inherent bias in post-Dear Colleague investigations – the core claim in lawyer Miltenberg’s CSU-Pueblo lawsuit – is its reference to the “rapid increase” in suits filed by students who were “wrongly disciplined.”
“Typically, these cases are brought by male students erroneously found responsible for sexual misconduct after being subjected to an arbitrary, biased and Kafkaesque investigation and adjudication,” it says.
Washington University Law Prof. John Banzhaf, who has called the 2011 Dear Colleague “unconstitutional,” said other states or municipalities could also challenge OCR in court by approving rules that contradict OCR’s, such as the right to cross-examination.
“Here it is not even clear that the [Title IX] statute authorized the Department of Education to have any involvement in the issue of rape complaints involving college students,” Banzhaf wrote in an email blast Thursday, “much less that it clearly intended to preempt any statutes individual states or municipalities might adopt. ”
Source
You know where this bitch came up with "dear colleague"? If it wasn't handed down to her then she reached as far up her ass as she could and pulled it out. It's not a law. It has no enforcement value yet she is acting like a smug little bitch about it. Let's see how smug she is with a congressional investigation looking up her ass. We'll see how smug she is then. Let's contact our Congressional representative and our Senators,especially Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator James Lankford. Let's teach this little bitch she can't just fuck with innocent men just because she feels like it.
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Thank Senator James Lankford for standing up to the Department Of Education femibullies
Senate chairman demands Department of Education ‘immediately rein in’ its Title IX ‘abuses’
Greg Piper - Associate Editor
March 7, 2016
Acting Secretary of Education John King, who could be confirmed to the post Wednesday, won’t be able to pacify Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., with tautologies.
In a letter Friday, the chairman of the Senate Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee dispensed with every argument by King’s underling at the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Catherine Lhamon, that Title IX gives the department the power to unilaterally issue broad new regulations related to harassment, bullying and sexual misconduct with no public rulemaking. (Read the footnotes in particular.)
Lankford minced no words with King:
I again call on you personally to clarify that these policies are not required by Title IX, but reflect only one of various ways schools may choose to develop and implement policies for the prevention and remedy of sexual harassment and sexual violence that best meet the needs of their students and are compliant with federal law. I further ask that you immediately rein in the regulatory abuses within the Department of Education and take measures to ensure that all existing and future guidance documents issued by your agency are clearly and firmly rooted in statutory authority.
The senator is greatly annoyed that the department keeps citing its own earlier guidance as justifying its later guidance.
RELATED: Department of Education official bizarrely claims it’s not threatening colleges in rape disputes
Regarding OCR’s 2010 Dear Colleague letter on sexual harassment and bullying, Lankford wrote King that the office improperly included examples of conduct that “can” violate Title IX – many of which are protected by the First Amendment – in and of themselves, not as one element of a “three-part test” as it has previously laid out:
But more importantly, regardless of however well-developed these citations to previous guidance documents are, they … do not have the force and effect of law, and therefore [cannot answer Lankford’s primary question] … What statutory or regulatory authority do you construe to arrive at the conclusion that Title IX requires that this proscribed conduct “can” be prohibited?
Lankford is also flabbergasted that OCR chief Lhamon thinks that “letters of findings” – her office’s settlements with colleges – justify its 2011 Dear Colleague letter that told colleges they must use the preponderance-of-evidence standard in sexual-misconduct proceedings in order to provide an “equitable resolution,” as required by Title IX:
[L]etters of findings carry no precedential value themselves and are a poor vehicle to alert regulated entities of new requirements … [These particular letters also] demonstrate that you have penalized those you regulate by enforcing standards never articulated by the Department and for which I question your authority.
In order for preponderance to be the only appropriate standard under Title IX, the statute would have to impose “strict liability” on colleges regardless of their response to sexual harassment or violence by students, which it doesn’t, Lankford said.
He noted that OCR “strongly discourages” schools from letting parties cross-examine each other, prohibits schools from letting accused students appeal unless their accusers get the same right, and even allows schools to make the same person the “fact-finder” and the “decision-maker” – all of which contradict “essential protections [that] defendants in a court of law enjoy”:
OCR’s silence on important due process considerations, coupled with the requirement of a lower standard of proof, indisputably tips the playing field against the accused, making the disciplinary process anything but “equitable.”
If OCR is really only telling colleges “its construction of the statutes and regulations” it enforces, it needs to cite actual statutes and regulations – not its own guidance and letters of findings, Lankford wrote.
Read the letter and excerpts from Lankford’s office.
Source
This is great. Finally lawmakers are standing up to these femibullies that enjoy pushing men around,stealing from them and depriving them of an education but leaving a black mark on their records that will haunt them throughout their professional and personal lives. Let's thank Senator James Lankford for standing up for college and university men accused of rape and for demanding due process be observed. Let's all thank him. The more of us he hears from the better. Click on email comment.
Greg Piper - Associate Editor
March 7, 2016
Acting Secretary of Education John King, who could be confirmed to the post Wednesday, won’t be able to pacify Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., with tautologies.
In a letter Friday, the chairman of the Senate Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee dispensed with every argument by King’s underling at the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Catherine Lhamon, that Title IX gives the department the power to unilaterally issue broad new regulations related to harassment, bullying and sexual misconduct with no public rulemaking. (Read the footnotes in particular.)
Lankford minced no words with King:
I again call on you personally to clarify that these policies are not required by Title IX, but reflect only one of various ways schools may choose to develop and implement policies for the prevention and remedy of sexual harassment and sexual violence that best meet the needs of their students and are compliant with federal law. I further ask that you immediately rein in the regulatory abuses within the Department of Education and take measures to ensure that all existing and future guidance documents issued by your agency are clearly and firmly rooted in statutory authority.
The senator is greatly annoyed that the department keeps citing its own earlier guidance as justifying its later guidance.
RELATED: Department of Education official bizarrely claims it’s not threatening colleges in rape disputes
Regarding OCR’s 2010 Dear Colleague letter on sexual harassment and bullying, Lankford wrote King that the office improperly included examples of conduct that “can” violate Title IX – many of which are protected by the First Amendment – in and of themselves, not as one element of a “three-part test” as it has previously laid out:
But more importantly, regardless of however well-developed these citations to previous guidance documents are, they … do not have the force and effect of law, and therefore [cannot answer Lankford’s primary question] … What statutory or regulatory authority do you construe to arrive at the conclusion that Title IX requires that this proscribed conduct “can” be prohibited?
Lankford is also flabbergasted that OCR chief Lhamon thinks that “letters of findings” – her office’s settlements with colleges – justify its 2011 Dear Colleague letter that told colleges they must use the preponderance-of-evidence standard in sexual-misconduct proceedings in order to provide an “equitable resolution,” as required by Title IX:
[L]etters of findings carry no precedential value themselves and are a poor vehicle to alert regulated entities of new requirements … [These particular letters also] demonstrate that you have penalized those you regulate by enforcing standards never articulated by the Department and for which I question your authority.
In order for preponderance to be the only appropriate standard under Title IX, the statute would have to impose “strict liability” on colleges regardless of their response to sexual harassment or violence by students, which it doesn’t, Lankford said.
He noted that OCR “strongly discourages” schools from letting parties cross-examine each other, prohibits schools from letting accused students appeal unless their accusers get the same right, and even allows schools to make the same person the “fact-finder” and the “decision-maker” – all of which contradict “essential protections [that] defendants in a court of law enjoy”:
OCR’s silence on important due process considerations, coupled with the requirement of a lower standard of proof, indisputably tips the playing field against the accused, making the disciplinary process anything but “equitable.”
If OCR is really only telling colleges “its construction of the statutes and regulations” it enforces, it needs to cite actual statutes and regulations – not its own guidance and letters of findings, Lankford wrote.
Read the letter and excerpts from Lankford’s office.
Source
This is great. Finally lawmakers are standing up to these femibullies that enjoy pushing men around,stealing from them and depriving them of an education but leaving a black mark on their records that will haunt them throughout their professional and personal lives. Let's thank Senator James Lankford for standing up for college and university men accused of rape and for demanding due process be observed. Let's all thank him. The more of us he hears from the better. Click on email comment.
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