Statement: Legal and Advocacy Groups Suing Trump Administration for Unlawful Title IX Rollback Respond to DeVos’s New Proposal to Further Harm Student Survivors of Sexual Harassment and Violence

In response to reports that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is preparing to introduce harmful new policies on campus sexual misconduct that would make it harder for student survivors of sexual harassment and violence to seek and obtain protections, national public interest organizations SurvJustice, Equal Rights Advocates and Victim Rights Law Center— represented by Democracy Forward, the National Center for Youth Law, and the National Women’s Law Center—  issue the following statement outlining the impact of the reported Title IX proposals their active lawsuit challenging the Administration’s earlier rollback of Title IX protections:

“It is clear that Secretary Devos is planning to launch another attack on gender equity and civil rights in education. We’re challenging the discriminatory animus that motivated the Administration’s first effort to issue unlawful Title IX policies and the necessity of our case is vindicated by the the fact that many of the items in this leaked draft rule are identical to the ones we filed suit over last year.”

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Background:

Democracy Forward, along with the National Center for Youth Law and the National Women’s Law Center, filed suit on behalf of plaintiffs SurvJustice, Equal Rights Advocates, and Victim Rights Law Center against the Trump Administration to stop the implementation of new and extreme Title IX guidance, alleging that it is unconstitutionally based on the Administration’s discriminatory beliefs about the credibility of women and girls who report sexual violence. The lawsuit also seeks to reinstate survivor protections revoked by Secretary DeVos.  The Trump Administration has since moved to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims, in part, by making the absurd argument that its discriminatory policy actually benefits the organizations who sued over it because it gives them the opportunity to pursue their missions of opposing sex discrimination. The original case, SurvJustice, et al, v. DeVos, et al., was filed in January in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.