TITLE IX CRAZINESS:  I hate to say it, but this tweet by the Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is unhinged.  She claims that prior to her birth one could rape students with impunity and asserts that the Department of Education’s new regulations will return us to those bad old days.

There was, of course, never such a time.  The traditional penalty for rape was death, but as a result of pressure from progressives many states were drifting away from the death penalty and opting instead for prison sentences by the 1960s.  Georgia, however, held firm.  In 1977, however, in Coker v. Georgia, the Supreme Court held the death penalty for rape to be unconstitutional.  It is worth pointing out that the Court’s conservatives dissented.

How regulations guaranteeing due process to individuals accused of sexual assault under Title IX can take us back to these mythical “bad old days” is beyond me.

.⁦@BetsyDeVosED⁩ presides over taking us back to the bad old days, that predate my birth, when it was permissible to rape and sexually harass students with impunity. Today’s students deserve better, including fair protections consistent with law https://t.co/Kxn5teeYnE

— Catherine E. Lhamon (@CatherineLhamon) May 6, 2020