Retroactivity And Title IX: Doe V. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

On October 16, 2020, the Northern District of New York, in Doe v. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, enjoined Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) from applying its 2018 Sexual Misconduct Policy to a complaint concerning an incident that occurred prior to the August 14, 2020 effective date of the Department of Education's new Title IX Regulations (the Regulations).¹ The opinion raises the important question of whether schools will be presumed, conclusively or otherwise, to violate Title IX by using pre-existing investigative and adjudicatory procedures for incidents occurring before the effective date of the Regulations, notwithstanding the statements in the Preamble to the Regulations and by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in a September 3, 2020 blog post that OCR will not apply the Regulations to complaints regarding pre-August 14, 2020 conduct.