Chapter 2 traces how a piece of legislation, Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments, became the primary vehicle for addressing campus sexual assault. Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program or activity that receives federal financial assistance. Although the legislation was intended to increase educational opportunities for women, it quickly became a means for increasing athletic opportunities, and then later a tool for combatting sexual violence. The chapter begins with a brief explanation of the administrative process before moving in chronological order through actions by the Department of Education and the courts. It then explains why even once sexual assault was recognized as a form of discrimination, it still took a long time to extend Title IX to peer assault.

Chapter 6 discusses Title IX under Secretary DeVos. It begins by describing how the Department of Education quickly broke from its predecessor before recounting the two-year process of promulgating new regulations. It then turns to the first of a two-chapter deeper dive into changes made to Title IX. Here, the chapter focuses on how the new regulations narrow what counts as actionable sexual harassment and weaken oversight of schools by the Department of Education. The chapter contends that most of these changes are deeply problematic and should be reversed.