Biden’s Pick for Education Dept.’s Civil Rights Chief Squeaks Through Senate

WASHINGTON — A divided Senate confirmed Catherine E. Lhamon arsenic the Education Department’s adjunct caput for civilian rights connected Wednesday aft she faced aggravated disapproval from Republicans, who questioned her views connected transgender students’ rights and however schools should code intersexual misconduct.

The Senate voted 50 to 50 on enactment lines, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote.

Ms. Lhamon, who was confirmed unanimously to the aforesaid station nether erstwhile President Barack Obama successful 2013, carried retired immoderate of Mr. Obama’s astir assertive civilian rights initiatives. During her tenure, the Education Department pursued a wide scope of civilian rights investigations into colleges and universities accused of mishandling complaints astir intersexual assaults connected campus, arsenic good arsenic into K-12 schools accused of discriminating against number and peculiar acquisition students.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights, which is charged with enforcing laws prohibiting favoritism successful schools that person national funding, has 12 offices passim the country.

Democrats called for Ms. Lhamon’s confirmation up of the vote, praising her erstwhile tenure. President Biden submitted her information successful May, but a Senate committee deadlocked connected whether to beforehand it, starring the afloat Senate to instrumentality up a question to determination guardant with her nomination.

“She has the experience, the enactment and the dedication to basal up for students from each walks of life, thing sorely lacking nether the erstwhile administration,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the bulk leader, said connected the Senate level earlier the vote.

But immoderate of her past enactment made Ms. Lhamon a lightning rod for conservatives who believed that she bent civilian rights instrumentality to the Obama administration’s will.

Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, called Ms. Lhamon’s way grounds “deeply troubling if not outright disqualifying.”

“Ms. Lhamon has a past of utilizing inflammatory rhetoric, violating students’ constitutionally-based close to owed process, and abusing regulatory power,” Mr. Burr said successful a statement aft the committee ballot successful August.

During her confirmation hearing successful July, Republicans grilled Ms. Lhamon connected however she would reshape Title IX regulations, which prohibit sex-based favoritism successful federally funded schools. Under Betsy DeVos, erstwhile President Donald J. Trump’s acquisition secretary, the section bolstered the rights of students accused of intersexual misconduct, prompting a backlash from victims’ rights groups. Ms. DeVos called connected senators to reject Ms. Lhamon’s confirmation up of the vote.

Ms. Lhamon denounced Ms. DeVos’s rules, though she said she would proceed to enforce them until they were rewritten.

“The regularisation permits students to rape and sexually harass with impunity,” she said astatine her confirmation hearing. “The regularisation has weakened the intent of Title IX that Congress wrote.”

Enforcement of the instrumentality has go a contentious issue, particularly aft the Obama medication issued guidance that advised schools to ramp up investigations of field intersexual misconduct.

Joe Cohn, the legislative and argumentation manager of the Foundation for Individual Rights successful Education, said Ms. Lhamon’s confirmation “does not bode good for those who judge Title IX indispensable beryllium enforced successful a mode that takes the rights of complainants and those they impeach arsenic seriously.” He added, however, that Ms. Lhamon could “prove america wrong” by pursing argumentation “that respects the rights of accusers and accused alike.”

Ms. Lhamon besides faced questions astatine the proceeding astir her views connected transgender women and girls competing successful women’s sports. Some states person moved to necessitate nationalist schools and universities to person athletes compete according to their enactment assigned astatine birth, alternatively than their sex identity.

“The committedness of Title IX is that nary idiosyncratic shall beryllium taxable to favoritism connected the ground of sex,” Ms. Lhamon said. “So I could not countenance discriminating against immoderate pupil successful the discourse of Title IX.”

In 2016, Ms. Lhamon helped pb the Obama administration’s effort to nonstop nationalist schools to let transgender students to usage bathrooms that match their sex identity.

Ms. Lhamon besides vowed to rebuild the Office for Civil Rights, saying that she was “devastated” astir its nonaccomplishment of unit during the Trump administration. She besides pledged to enforce race, enactment and disablement favoritism laws successful an “evenhanded manner.”

Under the Trump administration, the section rolled backmost respective Obama-era civilian rights policies, including the protections allowing transgender students to usage bathrooms corresponding with their sex identity, guidelines that encouraged colleges to consider contention arsenic a factor successful admissions to beforehand diversity, and rules directing schools not to subject number students astatine higher rates.

In June, the Education Department said that transgender students were protected nether Title IX, reversing the Trump-era policy. Ms. Lhamon has said she believes determination should beryllium civilian rights guidance connected schoolhouse discipline, signaling that the section volition reconstruct immoderate mentation of rules that Ms. DeVos rescinded.

Mr. Biden directed the Education Department successful March to conduct an expansive review of its policies connected enactment and sex favoritism and unit successful schools, kick-starting his pledge to dismantle the Trump-era intersexual misconduct rules.

Ms. Lhamon, a Yale Law School graduate, received her bachelor’s grade from Amherst College. In her grounds earlier the Senate committee this summer, she said she became a lawyer aft proceeding the stories of her mother, who attended racially segregated schools portion increasing up successful Virginia. She said the Supreme Court’s ruling successful Brown v. Board of Education helped signifier her mother’s knowing of justice.

Ms. Lhamon left the Education Department successful 2017 to service arsenic chairwoman of the U.S. Commission connected Civil Rights. She besides served arsenic ineligible affairs caput to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.