Biden moves to bring back Obama-era campus show trials

Joseph Stalin would be proud. A Democratic administration is once again eliminating due process on campus and substituting it with woke justice.

According to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression:

Judge José Cabranes of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals fired off a blistering critique of how colleges and universities adjudicated sexual-misconduct allegations during the Obama administration. Thanks to “regulatory diktats” imposed by the Department of Education in 2011, Judge Cabranes wrote in a concurring opinion earlier this month, campus procedures were so devoid of basic due-process protections that they “compared unfavorably to those of the infamous English Star Chamber.”

The Biden administration is bringing back these sham hearings. On Thursday the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights proposed new regulations governing how colleges and universities that receive federal funds—which is nearly all of them—must respond to allegations of sexual misconduct under Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination. The new regulations would eliminate or weaken basic procedural protections for students accused of sexual misconduct.

The right to a live hearing? Erased. Cross-examination? Unrecognizable. The standard of proof to determine guilt? Weakened. These fundamental safeguards are protected by the current regulations, which took effect in 2020 and reversed the 2011 guidance.