Law Commons^™

Title Ix’S Unrealized Potential To Prevent Sexual Violence, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

The mandate of Title IX is equality in educational opportunities. If educational institutions could prevent sexual assaults from occurring, they would more fully ensure that students are not limited in their ability to benefit from the school’s educational programs. However, Title IX administration on college campuses still focuses far more on post-assault infrastructure than on assault prevention.

Yet with the ever-increasing particularity of the assault response requirements emanating from the Department of Education (“DOE”)2 and courts, Title IX jurisprudence has strayed too far from this basic purpose: to ensure that students in federally funding schools are not denied or limited …

Classrooms Into Courtrooms, Naomi M. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

The federal Department of Education’s (DOE) 2020 Title IX Rule fundamentally transformed the relationship between postsecondary schools (schools) and students. While courts have long warned against turning classrooms into courtrooms, the 2020 Rule nonetheless imposed a mandatory quasi-criminal courtroom procedure for Title IX sexual harassment investigatory proceedings in schools. This transformation is a reflection of the larger trend of importing criminal law norms and due process protections into Title IX school proceedings. It is especially regressive at a time where calls for long-overdue criminal justice reform are reaching a boiling point across the nation. Its effects are especially troubling because …

Title Ix And Official Policy Liability: Maximizing The Law’S Potential To Hold Education Institutions Accountable For Their Responses To Sexual Misconduct, Erin E. Buzuvis

Faculty Scholarship

Title IX, the federal statute that prohibits sex discrimination in education, plays a key role in institutional accountability for sexual misconduct that is perpetrated by a school’s students, faculty, and staff. The Supreme Court has confirmed that Title IX includes an implied right of action for money damages when the institution had actual notice that sexual harassment had occurred, or was likely to occur, and responded to that threat with deliberate indifference. But the deliberate indifference standard has proven to be a high and unpredictable bar for plaintiffs. For this reason, many institutions required the threat of government enforcement—issued in …