Posted on 09/14/2016 6:18:55 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that not all sexual flirtation or interaction constitutes sexual harassment, and that whether conduct is bad enough to amount to harassment “should be judged from the perspective of a reasonable person in the plaintiff’s position, considering ‘all the circumstances.’” Thus, reasonableness is part of the legal standard.
But the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which has taken a radical leftward turn during the Obama administration, has now attacked that reasonableness standard. In a September 9 letter to Frostburg State University finding its sexual harassment policy in violation of the federal gender-equity law Title IX, OCR Region III attorney Beth Gellman-Beer wrote:
The Sexual Harassment Policy inappropriately stated that “in assessing whether a particular act constitutes sexual harassment forbidden under this policy, the rules of common sense and reason shall prevail. The standard shall be the perspective of a reasonable person within the campus community.” This standard falls short of the preponderance of the evidence standard required to satisfy Title IX.
This letter has been criticized by education reporters for ignoring the law and attacking common sense. Reason magazine’s Robby Soave writes that “In holding ‘common sense,’ ‘reason,’ and ‘reasonable persons’ in contempt, OCR is effectively saying that colleges should base their decisions on the perspective of an unreasonable person.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cei.org ...
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