Update on System Regulation 08.01.01

As you likely know we have been awaiting final Title IX regulations from the Department of Education, which were supposed to be released this month. At present, this is highly unlikely, as the regulations have not yet been submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for their required review, which generally takes anywhere from as little as a couple of weeks to a maximum of three months. Given this second significant delay, we have been working with the Office of General Counsel to review the current structure of the two regulations under System Policy 08.01 (Civil Rights Protections and Compliance), which include System Regulation 08.01.01 (Civil Rights Compliance) and System Regulation 08.01.02 (Civil Rights Protections for Individuals with Disabilities and Certain Other Employees). For some time we have been concerned that 08.01.01, which is intended to be a general compliance regulation, has become overly weighted down with the harassment and discrimination process. Moreover, changes in federal and state law have offered broad-based changes to accommodations that go beyond the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), meaning that 08.01.02 is also in need of attention.

This morning we received approval to move forward with a restructuring of the current 08 regulatory series. Dora Lisa Zavala and I are currently reviewing all appropriate materials and working to develop a new format that we intend to share with the 08.01.01 advisory teams in the next couple of weeks. The new structure tentatively includes the following regulations:

Planned Regulation – Subject Matter
08.01.01 – Civil Rights Compliance Roles, Protected Classes, Protections, Reporting, Intake
08.01.02 – Accommodations Accommodations and process requesting for all protected classes (ADA/504, Pregnancy and Parenting, Religion, Gender Identity, etc.)
08.01.03 – Civil Rights Harassment and Discrimination Complaints Complaint resolution processes for civil rights complaints

This new structure will also have implications for the documents that we had proposed as appendices to the regulatory rewrite. All of this information will be reformatted and sent to our two advisory teams in the next couple of weeks.

Additionally, we also met today to consider interim changes to the current 08.01.01 based both on changes in state law and the desire to make some immediate practice improvements. A summary of these changes will be shared once it has been reviewed by the Office of General Counsel, with the intent to have the changes go into effect in January.

If you have any questions, please contact Dora Lisa or myself.

Best wishes,

Rick Olshak