If it doesn’t, we’ll probably see more lawsuits like it in the coming years.

Robby Soave of Reason has the story.

The Campus Rape Lawsuit That Could Destroy Title IX Has Finally Arrived

A University of Virginia law student who was accused of sexual misconduct and banned from campus—years after the alleged incident—is suing the U.S. Education Department for giving UVA no choice but to rule against him.

His lawsuit is a direct challenge to the legality of the campus kangaroo courts the federal government claims are required under Title IX. Lawyers representing the student, John Doe, argue persuasively that he would have been found innocent of wrongdoing if not for the Obama administration’s insistence that universities adjudicate sexual assault under the preponderance of evidence standard.

This makes Doe’s lawsuit the strongest legal assault on Title IX to date. If successful, it could undo some of the damage wrought by OCR’s crusade to remove elements of due process from campus rape trials.

“This lawsuit is targeting the cause, and not just the symptoms, of the complete lack of due process on campus,” Justin Dillon, legal counsel for Doe and a partner at the firm KaiserDillon PLLC, told Reason.

To understand why this lawsuit is such a threat to the government, it’s necessary to understand how OCR’s Title IX guidance has evolved over the years. Prior to 2011, the office had never held that Title IX—a one-sentence statute forbidding sex discrimination in schools—required educational institutions to adopt the preponderance of evidence standard in sexual assault disputes. Recall that the preponderance of evidence standard only requires 51 percent certainty that misconduct took place. While it is used in civil cases, criminal cases require a much higher burden of proof: the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard. (Campus sexual assault disputes, of course, are neither criminal nor civil cases—they aren’t proper legal proceedings at all.)