Republicans renew push to expand due process rights on college campus

Rep. Bob Lynn (right) addresses a subcommittee of the House Education Funding Committee about a bill to expand due process rights for students and faculty on college campuses, on Sept. 23, 2025 (Photo by Ethan DeWitt/New Hampshire Bulletin)

When a University of New Hampshire student reports to the school that they have been sexually assaulted by another student, a lengthy process begins.

Depending on how the alleged perpetrator responds to the accusation, that process can either be handled voluntarily, via a mediation process, or it can play out in a hearing with both sides attempting to prove their case. The possibilities are spelled out in the university’s 31-page policy prohibiting sexual misconduct. 

The process can be complex. The victim and the alleged offender are each allowed to be represented by an attorney. The hearings can feel like court trials, with opening and closing statements made by lawyers or representatives before a decision maker. 

But however the process plays out, the UNH policy makes one point clear: “Neither party may directly question the other party or witness.” This fall, some House lawmakers are proposing to change that.

A bill gaining momentum would overhaul how UNH and other public colleges and universities conduct disciplinary proceedings. And one proposed change would require the institutions to allow alleged perpetrators to question their accusers directly. 

In New Hampshire, the bill could kick off the latest round of a long-running national debate.

Sponsored by Rep. Bob Lynn, a Windham Republican and a former state Supreme Court chief justice, House Bill 510 would mandate that those institutions put in place a standardized list of due process guarantees in those disciplinary proceedings. Among the rights universities would need to extend to the accused are “the right of the presumption that no violation occurred,” “the right against self-incrimination,” and “the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses who provide evidence against” the defendant.

The bill would apply to university disciplinary proceedings against students, student organizations, and faculty members. The proposed statutory requirements could thus apply to a number of proceedings, from academic dishonesty to breaches of the code of conduct. 

But the bill’s implications for sexual misconduct proceedings has drawn specific criticism from Democrats in Concord, who have argued the new process could re-traumatize victims and discourage them from reporting sexual assaults. 

Republicans, like Lynn, have countered that the right to confront one’s accuser is essential to a fair hearing, and have pointed to the consequences such proceedings can have for those accused. 

On Tuesday, in an exchange during a House Education Funding Committee work session on the bill, Democratic Rep. Hope Damon, of Croydon, raised concerns about how the bill could affect survivors of sexual assault.

“I think it is risking grave harm to victims of sexual assault to be cross examined by their assaulter,” she said.

“I fundamentally disagree with that,” Lynn responded. “The idea that somebody can be charged with … something that could affect the person for the rest of their lives that they do not have the right to confront their accuser.”

The University System of New Hampshire and the Community College System of New Hampshire have both raised objections to the bill, arguing it will require costly and unnecessary changes to their policies.

“We feel that due process is already well represented within all of our policies,” said Shannon Reid, executive director of government affairs at CCSNH, speaking to lawmakers. 

The bill, she said, “includes specificity such that it would necessitate a significant level of work to basically redraw how we do things without … substantively strengthening due process.”

A federal back-and-forth on campus due process

The New Hampshire bill comes after a series of dramatic swings in federal policy around campus sexual assault proceedings in recent years.

Colleges and universities are required to follow Title IX, a federal law established in 1972 that outlaws sex-based discrimination on campus. 

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In a pair of guidelines in 2011 and 2014, the Department of Education under President Barack Obama interpreted Title IX to require higher education institutions to address sexual assault on campus. Among its recommendations, the department said it “strongly discourages schools from allowing the parties personally to question or cross-examine each other during the hearing.”

But in President Donald Trump’s first term, the Department of Education reversed course, repealing many of the Obama-era sexual assault recommendations and advising colleges to allow alleged offenders to cross-examine alleged victims using an advisor.

Unlike the proposed New Hampshire law, the Trump administration policy, which took effect in 2020, did not require institutions to allow defendants to question their accusers directly. The policy remains in place today; an effort by President Joe Biden to change the guidelines again was struck down by a federal judge in Kentucky in January.

To public institutions, the changing guidance has felt like a “pendulum,” said Chad Pimentel, general counsel of the University System of New Hampshire. The latest version of the UNH anti-sexual assault guidance, for instance, was crafted with the Trump administration’s 2020 guidance in mind.

So far, there does not appear to be interest in the second Trump administration to make any more changes, Pimentel said in an interview. But HB 510 would require that the university drop its prohibition on parties directly questioning each other.

Pimentel argued there already exists due process protections that allow someone accused to challenge their accuser’s narrative. Typically, at hearings, this is done by submitting a list of questions that they would like the neutral fact-finder to ask the other person.

“There’s ways to confront (the other party) without you having to sit across — this far away — from somebody you’re accusing and that person gets to ask you questions,” he said. 

Lynn has argued that to be most robust, the right to confront an accuser must be given to the accused, not just to their lawyer or representative or to a fact-finder. 

But, he added, “that doesn’t mean that anything goes, that the person that’s accused can berate, harass, yell at (the accuser), whatever. Of course, they can’t do that.”

Growing Republican support

While Democrats have objected, Lynn’s bill appears to have Republican support. 

HB 510 was introduced in January but was held by the committee over the summer for further work. The full committee is slated to vote on a recommendation for the bill next week and the House will take up that recommendation in early January. 

On Tuesday, Republican Chairman Rick Ladd of Haverhill suggested he could support the bill with some revisions. Ladd’s main concern was that the definitions in the bill for “student,” “student organization,” and “public institution of higher education” are different from those in other parts of the higher education statutes. Lynn said he would be open to amending the bill to align those definitions.

If the bill passes the House in January, it will also need to pass the Senate. In 2024, a similar bill brought by Lynn, House Bill 1288, failed to clear that hurdle. 

Back then, senators in both parties expressed worries that HB 1288 could force the institutions to violate collective bargaining agreements with university staff unions, which typically lay out agreed-upon disciplinary procedures. The Senate voted unanimously to send the bill to further study.

This year’s bill is meant to address that problem, Lynn said Tuesday. HB 510 stipulates that the new disciplinary process will not affect faculty member disciplinary procedures until their current collective bargaining agreement runs out. After that, new collective bargaining agreements would need to align with the new law, Lynn said.

To Lynn and other Republicans, the aims of the bill are clear: to bring university procedures in line with those already employed by courts. And if universities already have the bill’s protections in their policies, they won’t need to change anything, he said.

“I think, as a state, we should give everybody equal protection and make sure that certain standards are applicable to every campus, and this, to me, sets the minimum amount of protection that everybody should have when they attend the higher education institution,” said Rep. Daniel Popovici-Muller, a Windham Republican. 

Opponents say that determination should be made by the institution. 

“There’s no indication that the rights of students aren’t being met, or parents, within the law,” said Rep. Wayne Burton, a Durham Democrat. “I don’t think the state needs to chime in from this level.”