Back to Top
Talking to Stakeholders About the Title IX Regulations
May 7, 2020
With the implementation of the new Title IX Regulations, we expect that institutions will be discussing them with various stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, and Trustees, as well as outside entities such as state legislators and your Congressional delegation. We don’t expect that these will be legally nuanced conversations, but these are some thoughts to keep in mind while having these conversations:
- ● The Final Rule is incredibly long and complicated. Released 100 days before the effective date, the Final Rule is 2,033 pages and 636,609 words. The Proposed Regulations were issued in 2018 and there are significant and meaningful changes between the Proposed and Final Regulations. While we anticipated some of the content of the Final Rules, we will need time and are taking care to read and study them promptly and efficiently to enable us to better discuss next steps.
- The Final Rule was issued during a global pandemic, which, as we expect you understand, has been and continues to be the main focus of institutional leadership and staff. This timing is regrettable, because it imposes a further challenge to our efforts to fully digest the Regulatory requirements and be able to speak meaningfully about them. The impact of the pandemic remains unknown as institutions plan for fall semester, and implementing policies and procedures in compliance with the Final Rule is an additional task for those professionally and personally stressed and stretched.
- The institution expects that the Final Rules will be the subject of multiple legal challenges, which could impact the timeframe for compliance with the Rule. We will monitor and keep you apprised in any developments in national or regional litigation.
- Any required changes to the Institution’s policies will be made in coordination with institutional stakeholders. Please note that some instances of conduct will not fall within the Final Rule, and they will continue to be addressed by other institutional policies, such as its Code of Conduct.
- Institution-specific response information (including additional information on the policy review and implementation process, staffing challenges in the pandemic, state law or regulation, and related).
The Joint Guidance on the 2020 Title IX Regulations is prepared as a service by in-house and firm attorneys, but does not represent legal advice. The Joint Guidance is compliance advice and no attorney/client relationship is formed with any contributor or their organization. Legal advice for specific situations may depend upon state law and federal and state case law and readers are advised to seek the advice of counsel. The Joint Guidance is available absolutely free pursuant to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (meaning that all educational institutions are free to use, customize, adapt, and re-share the content, with proper attribution, for non-commercial purposes, but the content may not be sold).
