An Austin professor has resigned from his law firm for tweeting shocking remarks about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos after she said Title IX rules could no longer be invoked in campus rape cases.
On Friday Robert Ranco, an adjunct professor of paralegal studies at Austin Community College, tweeted: ‘I’m not wishing for it… but I’d be ok if #BetsyDevos was sexually assaulted. #TitleIX #SexualAssault’.
Ranco resigned from his position at Carlson Law Firm on Monday amid backlash against the tweet, which he initially defended, but later characterized as ‘a mistake’.
Resigned: Robert Ranco (left) resigned from an Austin law firm on Monday after remarks he tweeted about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (right) on Friday
Shocking: In this tweet Ranco said he’d ‘be ok if Betsy DeVos was sexually assaulted’ after her decision to roll back Obama-era rules about Title IX’s use in campus sexual assault cases
Ranco has now deleted his Twitter account, but some remarks remain in Google’s cache.
In the immediate aftermath of his tweet, Ranco defended his remarks by writing: ‘Yes, @twitter. My words were harsh. I don’t wish harm on anyone. I wish there’s some way #BetsyDevos would understand and care about others.’
He added: ‘The #TitleIX rollback is bad for young women and that’s scary.’
Ranco was incensed by DeVos’ decision on Thursday to revamp Barack Obama’s guidelines on Title IX, a federal law that forbids discrimination in education based on sex.
Obama told colleges in 2011 that complaints of sexual assault by students fell under Title IX, and laid out rules for colleges to follow when investigating such claims.
DeVos rolled back those guidelines, saying they had ‘weaponized’ Title IX and led to innocent people being wrongly accused of sexual assault.
Critics of that decision – including Ranco – say that the threat of censure under Title IX is necessary to ensure that complaints of sexual assault by women are taken seriously.
Response: In the immediate aftermath Ranco defended his ‘harsh’ words, but he later went on to apologize to DeVos and ‘anyone else who was offended, impacted, shocked’ by the tweet
‘Scary’: DeVos has removed Obama’s decision to make colleges answerable to Title IX sex discrimination laws in campus rape cases, something Ranco said was ‘scary’
Ranco came to regret his remarks, telling KVUE on Monday: ‘My tweet from Friday was a mistake. I take full responsibility from it.
‘It was my mistake and nobody else’s and I apologize. I’ll be working continuously moving forward to make it for my mistake.
‘I hope that Secretary DeVos and anyone else who was offended, impacted, shocked by my actions that they can find it in their hearts to forgive me.’
But that wasn’t enough for Carlson Law Firm, a civil rights specialist, which announced the same day that he had resigned.
Craig Carlson, the company’s head, said that he ‘wasn’t going to make a rash decision about a member of this family just to appease people on social media’ but that Ranco’s position was untenable.
‘With over 150 employees – 75 per cent of whom are women – anyone in our company advocating or even expressing apathy towards sexual assault is affront to all victims and a line that simply cannot be uncrossed,’ he said.
Disagreement: DeVos’ critics say that Obama’s rules forced schools to take accusations seriously. DeVos says they led to too many false claims being made against innocents
‘This has been an enormous distraction that has taken us away from the mission of our firm, which is to care for and help people.’
Chris Kaiser with the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault told Fox 7 Austin that he also disliked DeVos’ decision, but that he could not support Ranco’s tweet.
‘The lesson here is if we are really interested in supporting survivors and pushing back against harmful policies we need to stick to the issues and prove our position is the sound one,’ he said.
‘It’s absolutely unacceptable to treat the experience of sexual violence in such a glib and political manner, its disrespectful to sexual assault survivors who have had that experience, its discrediting to the hard work we have to do to push back against the department’s agenda.’