What’s Wrong With the Violence Against Women Act

From Wendy Kaminer’s article in The Atlantic:

Will Creeley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) points out that “prompt and equitable” is a term of art under federal anti-discrimination law. It’s construed by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to require a low standard of proof (“preponderance of the evidence”) in sexual misconduct cases.

This standard was explicitly mandated in an earlier version of the VAWA reauthorization bill, and it was adopted by the Department of Education in a controversial April 2011 directive. It is practically a presumption of guilt. As former DOE official Hans Bader has explained, it means that “if school thinks there is as little as a 50.001% chance that the accused is guilty, the accused must be disciplined.”