During the Obama years, Catherine Lhamon was the point person for the Education Department’s assault on due process of law for students accused of sexual assault or harassment. Betsy DeVos undid the worst of Lhamon’s work while she was the secretary of Education, but now Lhamon is back in charge. That’s bad news.
In today’s Martin Center article, Kursat Pekgoz, James Moore, and Spiro Pantazatos look at Lhamon’s return to power. They write, “The Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, at her sole discretion, can cut off federal funding (and has threatened to do so) from any recipient educational institution she deems unwoke or patriarchal. Lhamon once quipped about how she enjoys carrying the ‘big stick of the federal government’ to further her agenda.”
Lefties always love using that big stick. What does Lhamon intend?
For one thing, “Lhamon wants to eliminate a rule that prohibits conflicts of interest and excessive partisanship, henceforth allowing institutions to return to the so-called single investigator model, wherein a single person (often a partisan bureaucrat) acts as police, prosecutor, judge, and executioner.”
Fairness must take a back seat to political objectives. Lhamon has pushed for revisions of Title IX rules that will make matters even worse than during her first time in office. Among other problems the authors identify, “Lhamon’s new rules may also make it impossible for legal activists to challenge procedures and practices that discriminate against men. The department ‘proposes to allow only those third parties who are participating or attempting to participate in a recipient’s education program or activity at the time of the alleged discrimination to make a complaint.’”
We can expect lots of new court cases where students complain of unfair treatment under federal regulations. But that won’t bother the ideologically driven Catherine Lhamon.