Dear John,

Last year, Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration finalized a Title IX rule that gutted critical civil rights protections for student survivors of sexual assault and harassment. So we sued them. And the judge recently issued a decision in our case vacating a harmful part of the DeVos Title IX rule, which will help many students immediately. That’s great news! The problem is, the Department of Education doesn’t plan to propose fixes to the rest of the harmful DeVos Title IX rule until May 2022—nearly a year from now. And that’s just the beginning of the long process of changing the rule, not the end. Students shouldn’t have to wait for years for the harmful DeVos rule to be reversed.

A few years ago, you all helped us by submitting more than 100,000 comments to the Trump administration explaining why the DeVos rule would make schools more dangerous for everyone. We need your help again to tell the Biden administration that we can’t wait until May 2022 to take the first steps to stop the attacks on student survivors. The DeVos Title IX rule needs to be replaced ASAP.

By taking action, you can help ensure Title IX will be restored by protecting equal access to education for student survivors by:

• No longer allowing schools to ignore reports of sexual harassment,
• No longer holding sexual harassment complaints in schools to a higher and more burdensome standard than complaints of any other type of student or employee misconduct, and
• No longer discouraging students from reporting sexual harassment to get the support and help they need to succeed in school.

The Biden-Harris administration has made clear that it is committed to restoring protections for student survivors, but we need them go even further and as quickly as possible. Every day that passes only increases the numbers of survivors who will be forced to suffer because of DeVos’s Title IX rule.

Survivors can’t afford to wait. We need action on Title IX now.

Sincerely,

Shiwali Patel
she/her/hers
Director of Justice for Student Survivors & Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center