Missouri’s Title IX process is broken and the liberal leaders of the campus bureaucracies are continuing to defend the status quo. These are the same universities that protected Melissa Click when she called for “more muscle” against the media and institutions that are currently being sued for denying students’ due process rights.
The opponents of these bills are using misleading and outright false claims to oppose the bill, attempting to deceive religious institutions along the way about the proposed changes. Why? Because they want to protect their liberal fiefdoms. It is time to reform this process to put the interests, and the Constitutional rights, of students ahead of the power of the of the professional bureaucracies on Missouri’s college campuses.
Currently, all Missouri colleges and universities comply with Title IX. Some religious institutions receive exemptions from the law for their religious beliefs. No proponent, nor the content of the bill, would seek to modify those exemptions in any way. In short, the bill and the intent of due process supporters would be to continue to protect religious exemptions at religious schools. Any argument to the contrary is false.
However, we cannot allow non-religious private institutions to continue their history of denying due process for students. These private, non-religious institutions currently receive millions in taxpayer-funded scholarships each year and are required to fully comply with Title IX. They are required to comply with Title IX now and they would be required to continue to do so after the passage of the due process bill. The only difference? They process would now have to protect the Constitutional due process rights of students.
The Missouri legislature must act now. The policies of Missouri’s colleges and universities in implementing the Obama Administration “guidance” of 2011 have left Missouri taxpayers vulnerable to lawsuits and huge settlements. In fact, there are currently more than 415 lawsuits against colleges and universities for denying due process rights of students on college campuses, including at Missouri’s public and private universities. That means that Missouri taxpayers could be on the hook to pay for, or subsidize, these settlements.
Additionally, the rulemaking process at the federal level could take years to complete. The Trump Administration must respond to over 100,000 comments received during the comment period before developing final rules. After that, litigation is likely. Additionally, Democrats in the US House have been pushing a new law to block the implementation of these rules and to, instead, make the Obama-era rules permanent. I have never known this Missouri legislature to “wait on the feds” or to look for the federal government for solutions. We shouldn’t start now.
Legislators have a choice; they can side with Planned Parenthood, liberal colleges and universities and the Obama Administration in opposing due process or side with the Trump Administration and conservative leaders across the state in protecting the due process rights of students on campus. I choose the latter.
