Education Dept. Defends Its Approach to Title IX in Face of Senate Pressure

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Education Department is standing by its controversial guidance to colleges on sexual harassment and sexual assault in response to questions raised by a prominent Senate critic.

Catherine E. Lhamon, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, defended her agency’s actions in a letter on Wednesday to Sen. James Lankford, who, as head of the Senate’s subcommittee on regulatory affairs and federal management, had accused the department of overreach in pressuring colleges to fight sexual discrimination to comply with the gender-equity law known as Title IX.
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In a letter last month to John B. King Jr., the Education Department’s acting secretary, Senator Lankford argued that the agency’s "Dear Colleague" letters offering colleges guidance on how to comply with Title IX’s ban on sexual discrimination "are not merely interpretive, but alter the regulatory and legal landscape in fundamental ways."

He said the department’s 2010 guidance letter dealing with sexual harassment and its 2011 guidance letter on sexual violence have been decried by "legal scholars and academics across the political spectrum" as pressuring colleges to take steps that threaten students’ free-speech and due-process rights.'