Blind Spots and Blowback: The Contemporary Refusal of Women’s Rights under Title IX

• In Event: The State and the Practice of Law

Abstract

We are investigating recent efforts to roll back Title IX’s prohibition against sexual harassment. In 2011, President Obama’s Department of Education released a “Dear Colleague Letter” (DCL) reminding schools of their obligations to address sexual misconduct under Title IX. To emphasize the urgency of the problem, the authors noted that sexual violence in education is not just a civil rights issue but also a crime. The document generated massive pushback, which ultimately succeeded in 2017 when the Trump Administration revoked the policy. How did the framers of and advocates for the Obama-era guidance enable its withdrawal? We use archival documents, lawsuits, media coverage, and interviews with key stakeholders on both sides to trace the development the DCL. To further clarify how the content of the DCL, the process of issuing it, and the broader context surrounding its release allowed for backlash, we compare its trajectory to those of two related policies: (1) nearly identical guidance released in 1997 that elicited no pushback, and (2) the civil rights provision of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) that, when first deployed, was struck down. Our emerging argument is that the copresence of criminal and civil framings of sexual misconduct in both VAWA and the DCL enabled a conflation of the two framings that activated concerns about possible rights infringements.

Authors

• Celene Raymer Reynolds, Indiana University Bloomington

• Elizabeth A. Armstrong, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

• Sandra R. Levitsky, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor