Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was served a letter signed by 20 state attorneys general asking her not to scrap Title IX guidance issued by the Obama administration which was built upon thoroughly debunked claims of a campus rape epidemic.

“We are writing to express our serious concern over reports that your office is preparing to roll back important protections for survivors of sexual assault on college campuses,” the letter states. “We urge you to continue to implement and uphold these important civil rights protections so that all students are able to learn in a safe environment free from violence and discrimination.”

The state AGs trotted out the false claims that over 20% of college women experience sexual assault on campus and that one in five women experience it in their lifetime. They took great issue with Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Candice Jackson who countered those numbers and said 90% of the allegations “fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk,’ ‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.’”

But the so-called campus rape epidemic is no epidemic at all. Like law professor Glenn Reynolds says, it’s all “just a bunch of media hype and political opportunism.” In fact, campus rape is less common, but because that doesn’t fit the narrative, it’s ignored. The real hoax is the 1-in-5 statistic when it’s more like 6.1 per 1,000 and that college students are way less likely to be raped than women outside of college.

With that in mind Reynolds says:

“If there's a 'campus rape crisis,' that means that we need new rules, bigger budgets, and expanded power and self-importance for all involved, with the added advantage of letting you call your political opponents (or anyone who threatens funding) 'pro rape.' If we focus on the truth, however — rapidly declining rape rates already, without any particular 'crisis' programs in place — then voters, taxpayers, and university trustees will probably decide to invest resources elsewhere. So for politicians and activists, a phony crisis beats no crisis.”

In 2011, Obama’s Office for Civil Rights issued the guidelines which required only a preponderance of evidence which lowers the burden of proof. It wasn’t a law, but a suggestion — a strong suggestion, as PJ Media explains:

One of the most notorious excesses of the Obama DOE was a 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter sent by the OCR to colleges across America. This letter was not a law, or even an official regulation, but "regulatory dark matter" by which the OCR effectively forced colleges to adopt a new policy — threatening that if they did not, they would lose federal funding.

The "Dear Colleague" letter ordered schools to investigate claims of sexual assault on their own, rather than turning them over to police. It also urged schools to do so with a bias against the accused, under the guise of fighting "sexual discrimination" under Title IX of the 1973 Higher Education Act. This was absurd on multiple levels, because Title IX was never intended to regulate sexual behavior among students, but only abuses by faculty or staff.

In the letter, the attorneys general believe the Department of Education is sending the “wrong message” by rolling back the current policies. Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro said in a separate statement, “We’re calling on Secretary DeVos to listen to law enforcement and trust survivors of sexual assault by keeping these protections in place and putting student safety first.”

So, trust "survivors" even if they made up the whole thing but produced a "preponderance of evidence?" Facts don't seem to matter to these people, and neither to victims of actual rapes.