The regulation issued under former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos created a tribunal system for judging reports of sexual assault. Most controversially, schools must allow both parties to cross-examine the other through a surrogate, which critics said could retraumatize survivors.
It also limited the off-campus cases colleges would need to look into and narrowed the definition of sexual harassment from the one the Obama administration urged institutions to adopt. Now, schools must evaluate whether the harassment is “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive” enough to interfere with a student’s education, which is the definition the U.S. Supreme Court uses in Title IX cases.
