Xavier Becerra, a California Attorney, reported that the state now supports the others to challenge the Trump administration, as a plaintiff in a lawsuit, as regards its most recent travel ban.
New rules had been put in place to curb sexual discrimination in public schools and colleges in California, as well as other states, as charged in a lawsuit held on Thursday. The new laws are to narrow down what constitutes sexual harassment, but the Trump administration has undermined them.
It was hoped that the new laws would reverse decades of attempts to put an end to the corrosive effects of sexual harassment on equal access to education. So it was expressed in a federal court filing in Washington, D.C., by lawyers for seventeen states, like a San Diego workplace sexual harassment lawyer, and the District of Columbia.
The rules were announced by Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary, for school administration handling sexual harassment. Devos made it clear that the standards for cases against sexual harassment, under President Barack Obama’s term, were too broad and unjust to the accused.
In November, she said, too many cases involve faculties and students who have faced investigation and have been reprimanded for merely speaking their minds or teaching classes.
In 2017, she gave guidelines intended to make it harder for the accusers to prove their claims and making it easier to defend against them. However, in San Francisco, a federal magistrate said the guidelines were not legally binding, dismissing a lawsuit by women’s right organizations. He also said states that ignored them would still retain federal funds.
Last month, the new rules which were announced are now legally binding and enforceable by the forfeiture of billions of dollars in federal education funds. These new laws are to take effect from the 14th of August; however, in their lawsuit, the states declared it is too soon. They said that because campuses were shut down due to the Coronavirus, there was virtually no time for consultation or review.
One of the new rules stated that an accuser must show that the alleged harassment is so extreme and objectively offensive that it denies a person equal access to the education program—but the law doesn’t hold when the accuser is alleging sexual assault. The states said those standards necessitates students to endure continual and escalating levels of harassment before they will be able to file a complaint against it.
Obama’s administration allowed accusers to prove their allegations by a preponderance of the evidence—which would show that the evidence had a higher probability of being correct than false. The new rules did not need schools to select a more-demanding standard, calling for clear and convincing evidence, but it did allow it.
The new rules also disregard some of the claims of harassment, which did not occur within the school grounds. This means former students cannot file cases anymore—even if the student left the school because of sexual harassment.
Betsy DeVos said if they did cross-examinations, then it would make the proceedings fairer, but those against it thought it would traumatize and intimidate the victims. Another change in the rule, which applied to colleges only, will require the accused student to get an “adviser,” who will question the accused at a hearing.
The suit requests that a federal judge impede the new rules.
Alongside the lawsuit, Xavier Becerra also said that from making mockery of the #MeToo movement, to pushing the ridiculous rule—that makes their schools less safe—President Trump wears his disdain for gender equality and safety with pride.
