</s>Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the Trump administration will revamp the guidance through a rule-making process that likely will take months. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP DeVos to scrap Obama-era school sexual assault policy

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Thursday that she will rescind an Obama-era schools directive on sexual assault and develop a replacement that she said would do a better job of balancing the rights of victims and the accused.

"The truth is that the system established by the prior administration has failed too many students," DeVos said during a half-hour speech at George Mason University where she took no questions. "Survivors, victims of a lack of due process and campus administrators have all told me that the current approach does a disservice to everyone involved."

Story Continued Below

But the announcement drew strong objections from womens' groups, victims advocates and leading Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, who said the changes were a step in the wrong direction.

"Any change that weakens Title IX protections will be devastating," wrote Biden, who drove the Obama administration's efforts to crack down on campus sexual assault, in a statement posted on his Facebook page.

"I'm asking everyone who has a stake in this fight to step up," Biden said. "Students, parents, faculty, alumni. Don't just sit and watch. Speak up. Any rollback of Title IX protections will hurt your classmates, your students, your friends, your sisters."

The 2011 Obama guidance for the first time pushed school district, college and university leaders to combat sexual harassment, including sexual violence, saying the institutions were required to do so under Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination. Women's groups hailed that as a crucial step in cracking down on sexual violence on campuses. But critics said it trampled the rights of the accused.

The Trump administration will revamp the guidance through a rulemaking process that likely will take months, DeVos said, blasting the guidance for having "weaponized the Office of Civil Rights to work against schools and against students." She said the administration will give all sides a chance to offer opinions on how it should move forward.

"We will seek public feedback and combine institutional knowledge, professional expertise and the experiences of students to replace the current approach with a workable, effective and fair system," DeVos said. "This is not about letting institutions off the hook. They still have important work to do."

Morning Education A daily dose of education policy news — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.

DeVos said after the speech that she intends to revoke the Obama guidance."The process is an extended one," she told CBS News. "But it is the intention to revoke or rescind the previous guidance around this."

The Education Department will issue temporary Title IX guidelines for school districts, colleges and universities as it works on a permanent replacement for Obama-era guidelines, said agency spokeswoman Liz Hill.

The far-reaching 2011 Obama-era guidance, issued in the form of a Dear Colleague Letter, was controversial from the start. It threatened a loss of funding to schools that failed to do enough to make students safe from sexual harassment, assault and rape. Critics said it pushed colleges to trample the rights of the accused. Among other things, the guidance pushed a lower standard of proof in campus disciplinary hearings than is used in criminal trials.

Many of those critics hailed DeVos' announcement as "a really positive development."

“I think it was a strong signal from the department that the current approach is unworkable and needs to be changed,” said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil rights group that brought a court challenge to the 2011 guidance.

Chris Perry, deputy executive director of the group, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, which represents people accused of sexual assault, said DeVos' remarks show “the secretary is listening to folks."

The decision to launch a notice-and-comment process was long expected. DeVos said in July — after a series of meetings with sexual assault survivors, students accused of assault and college officials — that she would overhaul the policy. She told reporters at the time that “it’s clear that there are failings in this process. A system without due process protections ultimately serves no one in the end.”

Advocacy groups — including those representing both sexual assault survivors and students accused of assault — were not invited to attend Thursday's announcement in person, despite meeting with DeVos on the subject in July.

Instead, DeVos delivered the announcement during a tightly controlled half-hour event at the university's Arlington, Va., campus, sponsored by the university law school chapter of the Federalist Society, a conservative group. Shouts from protesters outside could be heard as she spoke.

Advocates for survivors of sexual assault said they felt they were given short shrift and noted that research has shown false claims of rape are rare. They said DeVos had indicated she would hold similar listening sessions in other parts of the country before making a decision.

Giving them just one meeting with the secretary "feels a little bit like paying lip service to the importance of having survivors in the room," said Jess Davidson, managing director of End Rape on Campus.

"I think there’s been a really concerning false equivalence of the concerns of survivors and the accused throughout this entire process with the Department of Education," Davidson said.

Sexual assault survivors rallied outside the university ahead of the announcement, urging DeVos to keep what they see as crucial protections in place.

"It's really telling us that we don't matter, that our pain is not relevant to people in power," said Chessy Prout, 18, who said she was assaulted as a high school freshman and subsequently had to change schools.

Advocates slammed the speech afterward. “Don’t be duped by today’s announcement," said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center. "What seems procedural is a blunt attack on survivors of sexual assault. It will discourage schools from taking steps to comply with the law — just at the moment when they are finally working to get it right. And it sends a frightening message to all students: Your government does not have your back if your rights are violated. This misguided approach signals a green light to sweep sexual assault further under the rug.”

Complicating the issue for DeVos are comments made by her civil rights chief, Candice Jackson, who told The New York Times this summer that 90 percent of sexual assault claims stem from drunken and regretted sex. Another complication is President Donald Trump's boast about groping women in the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape.

“Secretary DeVos decided today to continue a pattern of undermining survivors’ rights, once again showing a clear lack of understanding or empathy for the millions of students who have experienced sexual violence on campus," Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat and ranking member of the Senate education committee, said in a statement.

But her announcement drew praise from at least one Republican lawmaker.

"The Department of Education is taking a positive first step in soliciting comments from stakeholders to get a better understanding of ways to better address the problem,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said. "However, this is an issue where Congress must give the Department of Education clear statutory authority to properly regulate."

Despite the administration's plan to rewrite rules on Title IX, it's unlikely that schools will immediately change policies that they spent the last six years writing — and sometimes rewriting — to remain in compliance with federal law.

"No school is going to go back to doing what they were doing before the 2011 guidance," said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education.

Mel Leonor contributed to this story.</s>After meeting with “men’s rights groups” this summer, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced on Thursday that she was going to change the way that sexual assault is investigated and adjudicated on college campuses “to ensure that such procedures are fair to all students.” Via the Washington Post:

“One rape is one too many,” DeVos said firmly, but she also repeatedly emphasized the rights of students who are accused, saying one person denied due process is one too many. “Every survivor of sexual misconduct must be taken seriously,” she said. “Every student accused of sexual misconduct must know that guilt is not predetermined.

DeVos said that the Education Department would seek public input to create a “more effective and just system.”

In July, DeVos raised eyebrows when she said that “stories are not often shared” from students falsely accused of sexual assault, despite the fact that false reports make up less than 10% of sexual assault allegations, a large fraction of sexual assaults go unreported, and accusers face an uphill battle when they file a report.

The Obama administration issued a directive that allowed for victims to file Title IX complaints if their school wasn’t handling a sexual assault complaint properly. Critics said that directive went too-far and created a de facto court system on campuses:

Rather than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard used in criminal cases, or the “clear and convincing” standard some universities had previously used for sexual assault investigations, schools now must use a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, often described as “50 percent plus one,” when determining responsibility in such cases.

Supporters of the directive said it was reasonable because if found “guilty,” a student was found to have violated school policies but not criminally liable:

“There is a learning curve,”Laura Dunn, the founder and executive director of the advocacy group SurvJustice, said. “But gutting things, changing things from scratch, going back to what it was before, when schools didn’t fear enforcement unless there was a lawsuit,” would be a giant step backward, she said.

At a small protest outside of DeVos’ announcement at George Washington University, a survivor’s rights advocate said no one from their organization or similar organizations was invited to Devos’ event.</s>Education Secretary Betsy DeVos declared on Thursday that “the era of ‘rule by letter’ is over” as she announced plans to change the way colleges and universities handle allegations of sexual assault on campus.

DeVos vowed to replace a set of rules enacted by the Obama administration in a 2011 memo known as the “Dear Colleague Letter,” which she said created a system that failed students.

“Instead of working with schools on behalf of students, the prior administration weaponized the Office for Civil Rights to work against schools and against students,” she said in a speech at George Mason University.

DeVos repeatedly spoke about protecting the rights of both victims and students who are accused of sexual assault, saying the conversation has wrongly been framed as “a contest between men and women.”

She didn’t detail how the rules will change but said her office will seek feedback from the public and universities to develop new rules.

The announcement was applauded by critics who say the rules are unfairly stacked against students accused of sexual assault, while advocacy groups for victims denounced DeVos’s message as a step backward.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced Thursday that she plans to end the Obama administrators guidelines for colleges on investigating sexual assault, saying the rules are unfair to victims and the accused. (Sept. 7)

Andrew Miltenberg, a New York lawyer who represents students accused of sexual assault, said he was encouraged by the recognition that accused students have been mistreated.

“Up until now, everyone’s been terrified of saying what she said because the fear is it would be seen as being against victims’ rights,” he said.

Activists from Know Your IX, an advocacy group for sexual-assault survivors, said the speech sent the message that colleges won’t be held accountable for protecting students.

“I really fear that DeVos will take us back to the days when schools routinely violated survivors’ rights and pushed sexual assault under the rug,” said Sejal Singh, a policy coordinator for the group.

Debate has flared in recent years over the 2011 guidance from the Obama administration, which requires schools to investigate all complaints of sexual assault and details how they must conduct disciplinary proceedings.

Critics say the rules call on campus officials with little legal experience to act as judges, and many say the standard of evidence required by the rules is too low.

Unlike in criminal courts, where guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, colleges were told to judge students based on whether it’s “more likely than not” they committed the offense.

Schools that violate the rules can lose federal funding entirely, although that penalty has never been dealt.

DeVos echoed critics during parts of her speech, blasting the rules for creating “’increasingly elaborate and confusing guidelines” and relying on the “lowest standard of proof.”

“Every survivor of sexual misconduct must be taken seriously. Every student accused of sexual misconduct must know that guilt is not predetermined,” she said. “These are non-negotiable principles.”

At the same time, she made clear that “acts of sexual misconduct are reprehensible, disgusting and unacceptable” and must be addressed head-on.

“Never again will these acts only be whispered about in closed-off counseling rooms or swept under the rug,” she pledged.

The speech drew about two dozen protesters who gathered outside the auditorium, including some women who said they were assaulted on their campuses. Among them was Meghan Downey, 22, a recent graduate from the College of William & Mary, who said she doesn’t want the Trump administration to “attribute more validity to the voices of the accused.”

Some education leaders from the Obama administration disputed the characterizations made in DeVos’s speech.

Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under President Barack Obama, defended the guidelines and said they have repeatedly been upheld by courts.

She added that her office frequently ruled on behalf of students accused of sexual assault, and rebuked DeVos for opening the rules to what she called “essentially a popular vote.”

“I thought she used her voice for ill today in a way that was damaging and distressing, but I believe our colleges will continue to fulfill their obligations,” Lhamon said in an interview.

Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement that the Trump administration is “once again choosing politics over students, and students will pay the price.”

Leaders of some colleges issued swift statements saying they’ll continue to follow the guidelines established under Obama, including at Bentley University, a private school of about 5,500 students west of Boston.

“Our commitment to these protections for all of our students, faculty and staff remains as strong today as ever,” Bentley President Gloria Larson said.

Others said it’s too soon to know how a shift in federal policy would play out on campuses.

Terry Hartle, senior vice president of American Council on Education, said it’s unclear how long the existing rules will remain in effect, but that colleges will follow them until told otherwise.

Hartle, whose group represents 1,800 college and university presidents, said he didn’t think DeVos’s speech indicates she’s backing away from the issue.

“The Obama administration took a very important step and raised the importance of the issue,” Hartle said. “But they missed the target, and we need to go back and ask whether or not we’ve got the policies and procedures in place that we should.”</s>Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said Thursday that her department will change the Obama Administration's guidance for handling cases of sexual assault on college campuses and rethink the way Title IX regulations against gender discrimination are enforced.

"The sad reality is that lady justice is not blind on campuses today. This unraveling of justice is shameful, it’s wholly un-American," DeVos said during a speech at George Mason University in Virginia . "There must be a better way forward. Every survivor of sexual misconduct must be taken seriously. Every student accused of sexual misconduct must know that guilt is not predetermined."

DeVos' speech came almost two months after she met with various advocate groups to discuss how sexual assault investigations are handled on college campuses, listening to victims of sexual assault as well as to men who say they have been falsely accused. Victims' advocates have urged DeVos not to roll back the Obama Administration's controversial Dear Colleague letter . That letter established strict guidelines for universities to follow when investigating sexual assault complaints or risk losing federal funding under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

On Thursday, DeVos criticized that guidance for creating a system that "has failed too many students."

“Instead of working with schools on behalf of students, the prior administration weaponized the Office of Civil Rights to work against schools and against students," she said. "The era of rule by letter is over. Through intimidation and coercion, the failed system has clearly pushed schools to overreach."

Protesters outside the speech chanted "stop supporting rapists," and advocates of sexual assault victims quickly criticized the announcement. "What seems procedural is a blunt attack on survivors of sexual assault," Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement. " It will discourage schools from taking steps to comply with the law—just at the moment when they are finally working to get it right."

DeVos said the department will launch a so-called notice and comment process to develop a new approach.

“We know this much to be true: one rape is one too many, one assault is one too many," DeVos said. "One person denied due process is one too many. This conversation may be uncomfortable, but we must have it. It is our moral obligation to get this right. Campus sexual misconduct must continue to be confronted head-on.”</s>WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Education announced plans Thursday to revamp an Obama administration policy mandating how colleges handle sexual assault allegations.

The policy, known as the "Dear Colleague Letter," was put in place in 2011 and falls under Title IX, which was initially used to ensure equality in college sports but has since been tied to causes like stopping sexual assault on campuses.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made the announcement at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia.

She said the Obama-era policy isn't working and has done a "disservice to everyone involved."

DeVos made clear that "acts of sexual misconduct are reprehensible, disgusting, and unacceptable," but said the policy tramples the due process rights of the accused.

"Washington's push to require schools to establish these quasi-legal structures to address sexual misconduct comes up far too short for far too many students," she charged.

"This is not about letting institutions off the hook," said DeVos. "They still have important work to do."

DeVos said her department will seek public comment and college expertise before making changes.

"In order to ensure that America's schools employ clear, equitable, just and fair procedures that inspire trust and confidence, we will launch a transparent notice and comment process to incorporate the insights of all parties in developing a better way."</s>Education Secretary Betsy DeVos intends to revoke former President Obama's 2011 guidelines for schools investigating campus sexual misconduct, she told CBS News' Jan Crawford in an exclusive interview Thursday.

Noting that DeVos, in a speech just before the interview, had announced the Trump administration would revise the current policy but did not say that she planned to rescind the 2011 directive, Crawford asked the Education secretary, "Are you today rescinding the Obama administration guidelines?"

"Well, that's the intention, and we've begun the process to do so," DeVos responded. "And as I've said earlier, in all of this discussion, it really is a process not an event." She reiterated, "But it is the intention to move beyond that and move towards a better way."

"The process is an extended one," DeVos added, "But it is the intention to revoke or rescind the previous guidance around this."

In 2011, responding to alarming rates of campus sexual violence, the Obama administration issued a "Dear Colleague" letter with guidelines for investigating and adjudicating sexual assault on more than 7,000 universities that get federal funding. The guidelines lowered the standard of proof in sexual assault cases and allowed accusers to appeal not-guilty findings. Federal funds would be withheld from schools that didn't comply.

But opponents, including leading law professors and civil libertarians, argue the guidelines disregard due process and have created another class of victims: innocent students who are accused of sexual assault, denied fair hearings and wrongly punished with suspension or expulsion.

DeVos said her department will develop guidelines that continue to protect sexual assault victims, while also ensuring fair hearings for the accused.

It will take time to undo the previous guidelines, DeVos suggested. "The process is an extended one but it is the intention to revoke or rescind the previous guidance around this," she told Crawford.

Earlier on Thursday, while delivering remarks at George Mason University, DeVos announced the administration would be taking steps to revise the current policy, by seeking "public feedback and combine institutional knowledge, professional expertise and the experiences of students to replace the current approach with a workable, effective and fair system."

The Education Department, DeVos said in her address, would be launching a "notice-and-comment process" to re-vamp the Obama-era policy on addressing sexual misconduct, incorporating the "insights of all parties in developing a better way."

While she condemned acts of sexual misconduct as "reprehensible, disgusting and unacceptable, they are acts of cowardice and personal weakness" DeVos criticized the investigative process of of Title IX investigations and cases.

"Any perceived offense can be turned into a full blown Title IX investigation. If everything is harassment than nothing is," said DeVos, a critique that suggested that the Obama administration had gone too far in writing its 2011 directive.</s>Secretary of Education and hugely problematic human being, Betsy DeVos, has vowed to replace the Obama-era scheme that required college campuses take sexual assault victims seriously via a series of guidelines.

DeVos said that the on-campus policies under Title IX (enacted in 2011), which stipulates universities must take action on behalf of survivors quickly and requires less evidence for the school to prosecute the accused, has failed.

"One student's rights cannot be paramount to the rights of another," DeVos said during an event George Mason University, implying under the current policies privilege victims. The Obama-era Department of Education threatened to pull federal funds if schools didn't comply.

DeVos claimed she was determined the public would be able to review the policies, to offer input as to how the administration should progress.

"Washington's push to require schools to establish these quasi-legal structures to address sexual misconduct comes up short for far too many students," DeVos said. "The current system hasn't won widespread support, nor has it inspired confidence in its so-called judgments."

Equal Rights Advocates Executive Director Noreen Farrell immediately clapped back at the statement: "The cost of an education must not be sexual violence or harassment. Campus sexual assault is a national epidemic, disrupting the education of one in four young women during her college years."</s>Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday reaffirmed her commitment to rewrite or rescind Obama-era guidelines that have prodded colleges and universities to more aggressively — some say too aggressively — investigate campus sexual assaults.

But during a speech at George Mason University in Virginia, DeVos stopped short of relaxing the policy, as some expected she might. She said the department would begin a notice and comment period to gather information and evidence to overhaul the guidelines.

Women’s groups fear that if the guidelines are changed, alleged victims of sexual assault will lose protections or face pressure to remain silent. Others say a revised policy could lead to a process that also considers the rights of those accused.

DeVos announced early in her tenure that she would reevaluate the 2011 guidelines that President Obama put in place. Her review came amid complaints that students who were accused of sexual assault were not granted due process and were battling a system designed to presuppose they were guilty.

“The failed policy has pushed schools to overreach,” DeVos said Thursday.

Devos, one of Trump’s most divisive Cabinet members, has already rescinded Obama-era protections for transgender students and relaxed some requirements regarding how her department probes complaints about schools' handling of sexual assault cases.

Read the 2011 ‘Dear Colleague’ letter that set new rules for campus sex assault investigations »</s>In a call to action to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ decision yesterday to rescind Title IX campus sexual assault guidelines, It’s On Us—a national awareness campaign that has worked with over 500 universities to prevent sexual assault on college campuses—launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise $5,000 to defend Title IX protections and prevent sexual assault on college campuses.

The campaign was organized by Sam Skaller, a sexual assault survivor who has worked as a student leader with the national It’s On Us campaign for the past two years. Sam has actively spoken out against sexual violence on campus. Through hundreds of events, speaking engagements, and workshops, he has witnessed firsthand that culture change is possible on college campuses no matter what your major is or where you fit in on campus.

Sam has stated, “We all have a responsibility to end rape culture in our communities. It’s On Us continues to give me hope for a future without sexual violence.”

Please show your support for Title IX protections and sexual assault prevention on college campuses by donating to the It's On Us GoFundMe campaign today here. Together we can empower the next generation of student leaders and change the culture!
United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos plans to change the sexual assault guidelines on college campuses created by the previous administration.