After more than a year in preparation, the formal proposal by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to bring sweeping changes to Title IX sex-discrimination regulations is set to be published in the Federal Register tomorrow morning, Thursday, November 29, 2018. The public will have 60 days to offer input on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) through comments filed with the U.S. Department of Education (ED).
Numerous stakeholder organizations representing a wide array of views are expected to offer detailed comments addressing legal and policy issues about the civil-rights protections afforded by Title IX, but individual comments about how the proposed changes will directly impact students, employees, and others are also vital. Offering these comments is relatively easy.
Beginning November 29th members of the public can go to https://www.regulations.gov and search for Docket ID “ED-2018-OCR-0064” or “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance” to begin the process. Users will be presented with a summary of the proposal, the complete text of the proposal beginning with an explanatory discussion, and an option to “Comment Now”.
Comments are accepted as a text entry or uploaded document, either Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF (text searchable preferred) and should include the Docket ID. Please note that all submitted comments are made publicly available on the website, so commenters shouldn’t include anything they don’t want made public.
The SAFE Campuses, LLC team has reviewed the “unpublished” version of the NPRM, will review the formally published version, and will be posting additional information during the comment period. Additionally, due to the comment period falling during final exams and the winter break several advocacy organizations are asking that it be extended to 120 days. We support extending the comment period and will post an update if it is extended.