At last, some good campus news: The Trump administration is going to require colleges to allow cross-examination in sex-assault cases.
In draft Education Department rules that leaked in August, schools were merely given the option of giving the accused the right to cross-examine their accusers.
Even that would be progress, since Obama-era rules essentially forbid that basic fairness — a lunacy that has led regular courts to repeatedly overrule the findings of campus tribunals when they lead to lawsuits.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ team recognizes that accusers face a special burden in face-to-face hearings, so the two sides could sit in different rooms, with questions relayed by a neutral party and the defense barred from asking about the accuser’s sexual history and other inappropriate questions.
Basic rights for the accused are a keystone of justice, and it’s a sad fact that campus sex-assault claims can prove false — infamously so in such cases as the Duke lacrosse prosecutions, Rolling Stone’s retracted University of Virginia story and Columbia’s Mattress Girl.
The Education Department likely will publish the new rules this month, the Wall Street Journal reports, with a public comment period to follow before they go into effect.
The change can’t come soon enough. »