George Leef’s latest Forbes column focuses on the fight against sexual assault rules instituted by the U.S. Education Department.

… [W]e have reached the point where federal bureaucrats are the true overlords of higher education and they get to decide what statutes mean. In particular, officials in OCR have pushed their ideas so far past the written law that we are now getting a strong legal counterattack.

One suit, Doe v. Lhamon, was filed June 16 in federal court in the District of Columbia. The unnamed plaintiff is a former University of Virginia Law School student who was accused of sexual assault in 2013. Doe maintained that the encounter was consensual and the evidence to the contrary was very weak. But the university, under pressure from OCR to use a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, eventually found him guilty.

The case was heard by a retired judge who called it “very difficult” and emphasized that she was compelled by OCR to use “the weakest standard of proof.”

Doe’s degree from the law school was held up for a year by the proceedings. Because he was found (under that weakest standard of proof) to have committed an assault, he will suffer a lifetime ban from all University of Virginia property and activities and will also have a permanent stain on his record that may inhibit his employment prospects.

As Robert Shibley, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is sponsoring the suit, remarks here, “OCR has acted as though decreasing due process rights will increase justice. In fact, the opposite is true. Real people’s lives are being irreparably harmed.”

The crucial element in this case is its attack on the legitimacy of the process through which OCR has compelled colleges to obey its directives. Doe argues that the OCR’s 2011 “Dear Colleague Letter” that admonished schools to adopt its preferred low-evidence, high-conviction approach to allegations involving sexual misconduct did not comply with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and is thus void.

Under the APA, all administrative agencies must notify the public of proposed substantive changes in rules, solicit feedback, and allow time for public comment before they make a rule binding.

OCR did none of that before sending out its “guidance” to colleges.