The Women’s Student Union v. U.S. Department of Education
This was a lawsuit brought under the Administrative Procedure Act to challenge key provisions of the Title IX regulations promulgated in 2020 by the U.S. Department of Education under the leadership of former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The regulations limited the rights of students who experience sexual harassment at school and represented a dramatic departure from the Department’s long-standing positions under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The Women’s Student Union (WSU) is an organization of young people who attend the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in Berkeley, California. It advocates on issues that affect girls and non-binary students, including sexual harassment. WSU wants the Department of Education’s help in ensuring BUSD follows Title IX, the federal sex discrimination law. But the 2020 regulations limit the federal government’s ability to investigate BUSD and require it to change its policies and practices on important matters related to sexual harassment.
On March 8, 2021, WSU filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against the Department of Education. The lawsuit asked the court to strike down four key provisions of the 2020 regulations: (1) the narrow definition of sexual harassment, (2) the limitation that schools need not address harassment that that occurs in certain off-campus environments, even if that harassment creates a hostile environment in school, (3) the rule that schools are only required to address harassment of which they have “actual knowledge,” and not other harassment of which they should know, and (4) the rule that schools only violate Title IX if they are “deliberately indifferent” to sexual harassment—that is, if they act in a “clearly unreasonable” manner.
The district court dismissed the case on “standing” grounds: Without reaching the merits of WSU’s claims, the court held that WSU had not yet been injured by the 2020 regulations, so could not bring a lawsuit. WSU appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2024, the Department of Education issued new, better Title IX regulations that, for now, replace the 2020 rules in some states, including California. In light of this change in policy, WSU voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit in December 2024.