5 Things to Know About Betsy DeVos, Barack Obama, and Campus Rape

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Free Speech Group Denounces Lawsuit

The campus free speech watchdog group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education critiqued the Equal Means Equal lawsuit in an entry on their website posted on Tuesday.

A critic of the 2011 standards, FIRE argued that the lawsuit had many "disingenuous and troubling" claims, including the claim that DeVos violated the Administrative Procedure Act when rescinding the Obama era rules.

"ED's September documents only rescind directives that were either unlawful to begin with or lawfully rescindable without procedure, by OCR's own public statements," argued FIRE.

"After six and a half years of ED and advocates for the 2011 Dear Colleague letter arguing that the letter did not constitute a violation of the APA because it was mere 'interpretative guidance,' those same advocates are now turning around and arguing that it was something more."

FIRE concluded by stating that they "hope that the court will see the glaring errors — and sheer chutzpah — in the complaint's arguments and decline to undo ED's significant step in support of student due process rights."