Catherine Lhamon will return to lead the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights after the Senate narrowly confirmed her appointment in a party-line vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the 50-50 tie.
Lhamon is expected to play a key role in the Biden administration’s overhaul of rules regarding Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in educational settings.
The Biden administration’s efforts include expanding Title IX protections to cover gender identity and sexual orientation, and potentially rolling back rules made by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who bolstered due process rights of those accused of sexual misconduct and limited the scope of cases that colleges have to investigate.
The Democrats celebrated the confirmation, praising Lhamon as a champion of civil rights.
“With this confirmation, our nation has once again gained a champion who will work each day to ensure that our public schools and institutions of higher education become ever fairer and more just,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “Catherine is one of the strongest civil rights leaders in America and has a robust record of fighting for communities that are historically and presently underserved.”
The Republicans, however, find Lhamon’s record of leading the OCR troubling. North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the top Republican on the Senate Education Committee, accused Lhamon of “pushing a highly partisan, politicized agenda” during her tenure and “overstepping” her authority.
“In her previous tenure, she made it clear she believed her guidance to schools was ‘binding’ and she worked to enforce it as though it were law,” Burr added, arguing that it was “inexcusable” for an unelected official to not understand the limits of her authority.