Transition Rules in Administrative Law

Note. This is a first draft. I want to write it up to get comments. I have not checked the law, the dates, and the facts in it, and probably some of them are wrong. It is accurate enough to be useful for discussion, however.

The Hypothetical

Consider the Title IX regulations on the question of whether a university has to allow a professor to know the names of the witnesses against him and let him ask questions. The Obama rules said it does not--let's call those the 2015 rules. In May 2020, the new Trump rules said that it did. Very likely, there will be Biden rules soon that will say it does not again-- let's call those the 2022 rules. Suppose that in 2019 the university starts investigating the professor for allegations of misconduct in 2018, but the investigation continues until 2023. Which rules must the university follow?

Claimed Answers

My own university takes the position that it should use the Obama rules. The Dept of Education said in August 2020, I think, that it is okay but not necessary to use the Obama rules if the investigation is for "sexual harassment", but is silent as to an investigation for "sexual discrimination". I hear that New York court has ruled against the Department of Education on this point, saying that it is improper to let the university have its choice of whatever rules it likes best depending on the professor being targeted.

The Issues

The question raises lots of interesting questions, and reaches to the profoundest issues in administrative law. What is a regulation? What deference do the courts owe to the agency, if any? Can Congress really delegate lawmaking authority to the President so that the law changes with each presidential election? Is the President really in charge anyway, or does our system give real sovereignty not to Congress or the President, but to the bureaucracy?

This last question may seem overdramatic, but it is not. Suppose, as is likely, that the Department of Education personnel favor the Obama rule of not allowing the professor to ask questions that might help with his defense. When Trump came to office, it took him 3 years, until May 2020, to get the new rule through the process. The bureaucrats said universities actually did not have to comply until August 2020. Then they said that if the allegations were for behavior before August 2020, the university did not have to comply at all. No doubt, if in 2022 a university wants to investigate allegations of misbehavior between August 2020 and 2022, the Department of Education will say they can use the new 2022 rules. Thus, by playing with transition rules, the Department of Education can entirely thwart a disfavored President and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Common Law Principles

The courts do provide a check on the Department of Education. Let's think, first, what the law *should* be, according to common law principles. We will ignore Bill of Rights issues, and just think about the contract between professor and university.

That contract says that the professor may be fired for severe misconduct, but not at the whim of the university. It is not employment at will. The contract is unclear about how bad the misconduct must be, or what procedures must be followed, if any, to decide whether it really was misconduct. Common law principles would say that the severity of the misconduct required for dismissal would depend on the past practice of the university and other universities and on both party's reasonable expectations, which could change over the years of the contract. No particular procedures would need to be followed, but the Court would tend to defer to the university if it followed careful procedures that would be likely to produce a fair and accurate result, and to be suspicious and defer to the professor if the university chose arbitrary procedures that looked chosen so as to lead to firing for unlawful reasons that couldn't be exposed to the light of day.

Title IX in Particular: The Funding of Federal Programs

Title IX is special. What the statute says is that the Department of Education will not fund universities that discriminate on the basis of sex.

Implementing Regulation versus Statutory Interpretation

Nothing here yet.

Doe v. Rensselaer Polytechnic (2020)

In Doe v. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Federal District Court of the Northern District of New York halted RPI’s scheduled Title IX hearing regarding a complaint that “Doe” had sexually assaulted “Roe” in part because the School was using its policies from before the new Title IX regulations were implemented, which did not involve steps such as allowing cross-examination of witnesses (a requirement for college level Title IX investigations in the new regulations), rather than its new policies implemented after the regulations went into effect. The Court suggested that the college should use the new procedures even though the alleged conduct had occurred prior to the effective date of the regulations. "

"New York Federal District Court Holds That Title IX Regulations Apply Retroactively," Melinda Kaufmann, Pullman & Comley - School Law

The decision starts with the procedural history:

Plaintiff alleges that defendant is discriminating against him on the basis of sex in contravention of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 ("Title IX") through procedural irregularities in its disciplinary process and its disposal of his own Title IX sexual assault complaint....

On January 31, 2020, defendant notified Doe that it was initiating a Title IX investigation against him as a result of that incident. On June 9, 2020, plaintiff filed his own Title IX complaint against Roe, alleging that he was too intoxicated to consent to sexual activity on the night of January 23. Roe was interviewed by a Title IX investigator concerning her own complaint on February 3, 2020, and interviewed again concerning plaintiff's complaint on July 17, 2020.

On August 4, 2020, RPI concluded by a preponderance of the evidence that it was more likely than not that Doe violated the school's August 24, 2018 Student Sexual Misconduct Policy ("the 2018 policy") by sexually assaulting Roe. As was his right, plaintiff requested a hearing to challenge the initial finding that plaintiff had violated defendant's sexual misconduct policy. That same day, defendant dismissed plaintiff's Title IX complaint against Roe, finding that he had failed to establish his allegations by the same standard. ... Doe timely appealed RPI's determination on August 11, 2020, requesting a hearing as to his claim's dismissal. ... Defendant denied plaintiff's appeal on August 25, 2020, claiming that plaintiff had failed to demonstrate an error in the denial that would merit a hearing.

Doe argued that the procedures of the Trump rules should have been followed: 

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There still is the question of whether the university's unfair rules are discrimination on the basis of sex:

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The University argued that the Preamble and the OCR webpost said it could choose between old and new rules: 

RPI counters Doe's showing by arguing that he has no right to have his hearing governed by the 2018 policy because both the preamble to the new Title IX rule and the OCR post state that the Department of Education will not enforce the new rule retroactively.[5] To hear defendant tell it, the preamble and the OCR post provide it license not to impose the new rules for sexual assault allegations where the alleged assault took place before August 14, 2020. In fact, defendant argues that those statements preclude this Court from finding to the contrary because it is bound to defer to an agency's interpretations of regulations that it promulgates. See Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 459-62 (1997).

Doe fires back that the preamble does not have the force of law and that the OCR post is not due any deference because it lacks formality and does not turn on the Department of Education's substantive expertise. Kisor v. Wilkie, 139 S. Ct. 2400, 2414 (2019) (holding that Auer deference for agency's interpretations of agency regulations only applies to "an agency's authoritative, expertise-based, fair, or considered judgment" (cleaned up)).

Doe has the better of this argument for three reasons. First, even assuming that the preamble is entitled to deference, it would not be enforcing the new Title IX rules retroactively to use them for hearings occurring after August 14, 2020. After all, the preamble itself is unclear what it means when it discusses retroactivity.

It could mean, as RPI suggests, that the Department of Education would not sanction schools for not applying the new rules to any case where the alleged sexual assault took place before they took effect. But it could just as easily mean that schools would not face Department of Education sanctions if they did not reopen previously completed hearings that did not follow the new Title IX rules. After all, if a hearing—Doe's, for example—occurs under the new rules after August 14, 2020, from a certain point of view that hearing would apply the new rules prospectively because the rules were in effect before the hearing itself took place. In other words, defendant's proposed definition of retroactivity is not the only possible meaning of the word, and its argument does not powerfully sway the Court in defendant's favor.[6]

Second, Doe is correct that the Court is not bound to follow the OCR post because it is not an authoritative statement entitled to Auer deference. Kisor, 139 S. Ct. at 2414. As such, the OCR post's position that the relevant date for retroactivity is the date the alleged sexual assault occurred need not be the last word on the matter.

Moreover, given the logistical problems with that interpretation, the Court is not inclined to rally to that position. Under the OCR post's standard, schools may maintain two parallel proceedings until every claim of sexual misconduct allegedly occurring prior to August 14, 2020 is resolved. But it is unclear when that day would come, because there may be several claims that a sexual assault occurred prior to August 14, 2020 that have yet to be brought to a school's attention.[7] After all, under either the 2018 or 2020 policies, "a Complaint of Sexual Misconduct may be filed at any time, regardless of the length of time between the alleged Sexual Misconduct and the filing of the Complaint.

It would thus be difficult for a school to provide any kind of timeframe for sunsetting its policies that predate the new Title IX rules when the anchoring principle keeping those policies alive is the hypothetical possibility that new sexual misconduct claims for sexual assaults that took place before August 14, 2020, could arise. The absurd—yet necessary— result of an institution following the OCR post's guidance to the letter would be that school's indefinite maintenance of an entire alternative procedure, perhaps behind a pane of glass labelled "Break in Case of Emergency," just in case a claim of sexual assault allegedly occurring before August 14, 2020 should arise....

Thus, even if RPI would not be subjected to Title IX consequences from the Department of Education for electing to use the date of the alleged sexual assault as the date that governs which policy it will use, it was still free to choose to use the 2020 policy. It decided not to, despite the sizeable administrative headaches that decision entails. Accordingly, Doe will have several viable arguments at his disposal in dealing with defendant's prospective non-discriminatory reason for not proceeding with plaintiff's hearing under the 2020 rules, and defendant's retroactivity argument does not dip plaintiff's showing of likely success on the merits below the requisite fifty-percent threshold.

The University also argued that the Obama Rules didn't violate the U.S. Constitution by denying due process, citing a Second Circuit District Court case. That is of interest generally, but the judge here said correctly that it was completely irrelevant to the case before him:

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In the "Balance of Hardships" section, the University makes a ridiculous argument, and gets ridiculed:

RPI's counterargument is the following:

To allow an individual found to have violated the Student Sexual Misconduct Policy to circumvent any and all university-based ramifications and sanctions. . . would be an injustice and provide carte blanche for engaging in rape, sexual misconduct and sexual harassment without any possibility of university-based sanction.

It is troubling enough that defendant frames protections for one individual's due process rights, whether that individual be male or female, as inciting campus sexual assault on a mass scale. But far worse is that by its own litigation position defendant seems already to be considering plaintiff to be guilty of violating the policy without giving him any opportunity to challenge its evidence. Needless to say, defendant's arguments on this point are ill-advised, and do little to demonstrate that the equities do not favor granting plaintiff's requested injunction.

Ultimately, Doe has shown that the balance of the hardships tips decidedly in his favor. After all, RPI's interest in punishing those it finds in violation of its sexual misconduct policy should be no greater than its interest in ensuring that its accused students are not unjustly punished to their lifelong detriment. Besides, it is tragically all too likely that more sexual assault complaints will follow this one. Delaying one hearing in light of some sobering evidence of discrimination against a male is an insubstantial loss for defendant, and certainly not an all-consuming one. But plaintiff only has one reputation, one career, and one life.

In the "Public Interest" section, the Court notes that both sides neglected to brief that one of the four factors (! --- so incompetent-- had these attorneys ever argued a preliminary injunction before?), but it was easy for him to decide it sua sponte.

"In exercising their sound discretion, courts of equity should pay particular regard [to] the public consequences in employing the extraordinary remedy of injunction." Winter, 555 U.S. at 24. Nevertheless, the parties both neglected to address this element. The Court will nevertheless assess the evidence on its own and determine whether granting Doe's injunction would align with the public interest.

It is with no great difficulty that the Court resolves that issue in Doe's favor. Although RPI correctly noted at oral argument that Roe's rights need to be protected in this case as well, that protection cannot come at the expense of Doe's in the absence of a fair determination of his culpability. Moreover, that the new Title IX rules exist at all is evidence that national policymakers have determined that protecting the due process rights of those accused of sexual assault on college campuses is a matter of grave national import. There is no cause to actively impede those efforts by allowing a disciplinary hearing to move forward despite credible evidence of sex discrimination.

Of course, the most critical issue at stake in the change from the old Title IX rules to the new is that respondents accused of sexual assault have a right to cross-examine their accuser at a live hearing. The Court does not lightly disregard the potential that this change could discourage accusers from coming forward. But that policy determination has already been made by those charged to make those decisions, and second-guessing that choice is well beyond the scope of this litigation. Accordingly, the public interest would not be disserved by granting Doe's requested injunction. Quite the contrary.

In the conclusion, the plaintiff wins and the University loses:

Against Doe's protected rights, RPI's showing of the equities amounts to hollow portents of rampant sexual assault and the impermissible assumption that plaintiff is already guilty despite not having so much as a hearing on a matter of grave import to his future. Plaintiff has thus proven each a likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm should a preliminary injunction not be granted, that the balance of the equities favors granting the injunction, and that the public interest would not be disserved by enjoining defendant from conducting its hearing against him. Accordingly, plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction must be granted. Defendant will be enjoined from proceeding in its hearing against plaintiff until its treatment of plaintiff has been tested and this case has run its course.

However, should both parties stipulate in writing to moving forward with the hearing under the 2020 policy, the Court would reconsider the ongoing necessity of this injunction. This allowance is not made because of any position concerning the retroactivity of the new Title IX rules. Instead, it is a recognition that Doe has made a showing that RPI's current regime may be discriminating against him on the basis of his sex, and if he is satisfied that the 2020 policy's additional protections would adequately shield him—which he has indicated that he believes they would—the Court would be willing to entertain allowing RPI to proceed. Barring that, this Court must be satisfied that defendant adequately protects male students like Doe before he can be threatened with discipline in this matter.

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Doe v. Rensselaer Polytechnic, No. 1:20-CV-1185, October 16, 2020 (N.D. New York, 2020).

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NOtes

Nothing here yet.

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