President Biden’s pick to head the civil rights division under the Department of Education (DOE) testified Tuesday that she would uphold a Trump-era Title IX regulation even though she claimed it lets students “rape and sexually harass students with impunity.”
Title IX is the 1972 law barring discrimination based on sex in education and has been the center of heated debate over penalties for students accused of sexual misconduct at universities across the U.S.
During Catherine Lhamon’s Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., questioned her about a previous statement in which she criticized Title IX regulations implemented by former President Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Lhamon defended a May 2020 tweet, claiming that the Trump-era Title IX regulations allow students to “rape and sexually harass students with impunity.”
Sen. Cassidy asked Lhamon during the hearing about her tweet: “Do you think as if the law, the way it is implemented, that it has given the right to rape and sexually harass with impunity?”
Lahmon doubled down on her previous statement answering, “I think what I said in the tweet, the regulation permits students to rape and sexually harass with impunity. I think that the regulation has weakened the intent of Title IX that Congress wrote.”
