Filed Under: Final Rule
The regs are not retroactive, thus incidents occurring before August 1, 2024, must be resolved using the 2020 Rule. What does this mean with respect to incidents that occurred before August 14, 2020? Under what Rule will OCR enforce with respect to those incidents?
As explained in the preamble to the 2020 Title IX regulations, those regulations took effect on August 14, 2020, and do not have retroactive effect. See 85 FR 30028, 30061. With respect to sexual harassment that allegedly occurred prior to August 14, 2020, OCR will judge a recipient’s Title IX compliance against the Title IX statute and the Title IX regulations in place at the time that the alleged sexual harassment occurred and will not apply the 2020 Title IX regulations. Prior to August 14, 2020, the Title IX regulations did not have specific requirements for recipients related to sexual harassment, but OCR had several guidance documents in place to assist schools in understanding how OCR interpreted the Department’s Title IX regulations. Although the guidance documents issued in 2011 and 2014 were rescinded on September 22, 2017, and the 2001 and 2017 guidance documents were rescinded on August 14, 2020, these documents remain accessible on OCR’s website for historical purposes to the extent they are helpful to recipients when responding to earlier allegations of sexual harassment.