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Sign and send to your members of Congress: Protect student survivors of sexual violence. Overturn Betsy DeVos’s new Title IX rule.

On May 6, Betsy DeVos and the U.S. Department of Education announced a new Title IX rule that will roll back rights for student survivors of sexual violence. It is scheduled to take effect on August 14.

In the middle of a pandemic, the Trump administration is making clear where its priorities lie: with perpetrators of sexual assault.

The administration’s new Title IX rule gives more protections to assailants at the expense of survivors. The rule:

Allows schools to ignore sexual violence that occurs outside of school grounds or outside the country, like in off-campus housing or during study abroad programs, even if it impacts a survivor’s education;

Protects schools from liability for ignoring or covering up sexual harassment;

Narrows the definition of sexual harassment so that a school is only required to act if the survivor is no longer able to access education, abandoning students to endure escalating levels of abuse without help; and

Subjects survivors to live cross-examination by their assailant’s adviser or lawyer, creating a campus culture that further silences and retraumatizes survivors.

Implementing such a rule at any time would be unacceptable, but finalizing and instituting it in the middle of a public health crisis is shameful and unconscionable.

University administrators are now responsible for putting this extremely complex rule into practice in the midst of COVID-19-related closures, which may last into the fall. Even more concerning, survivors are now burdened with the new rule on top of adjusting to remote learning, finding housing, and more unprecedented effects of the pandemic.

Student survivors need support, not calculated attacks from the Trump administration. Thankfully, this fight is not over. As survivor justice groups mount legal battles against the Dept. of Education, Congress must do its part to stop this rule.

Congress can use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the new Title IX rule. The CRA allows Congress 60 days to overturn a federal rule once it is published in the federal registrar and submitted to Congress. It only needs a simple majority in both chambers.

Your U.S. senators and representative can stop this extremely dangerous, willfully cruel rule from going into effect. The Trump administration cannot be given a free pass to terrorize and retraumatize student survivors.

https://www.dailykos.com/campaigns/lett ... le-ix-rule