The lawsuit, filed in April 2018, charges that the school violated guidelines issued under the Obama administration, which were in place at the time the assault was brought to Holland officials’ attention. The rules required schools to investigate sexual assaults that took place off campus and take steps to protect accusers from their accused while an investigation unfolded. In 2017, before the Hoffman lawsuit was filed, Ms. DeVos announced that she would scrap the Obama-era guidelines and rewrite the law. She proposed new rules last fall.

The Obama administration’s guidance drew wide-ranging criticism, including from college administrators, as arbitrary edicts that pressured colleges to conduct quasi-legal processes with a presumed outcome in favor of victims. And in the last year, significant court rulings have aligned with Ms. DeVos’s efforts to provide a firmer legal framework for campus investigations.

The case, expected to go to mediation or a courtroom this summer, asserts that the Hoffman’s daughter suffered “severe and pervasive” sexual harassment that denied her access to her education. It argues that school administrators had “actual knowledge” of the assault, meaning that it was reported to officials with the authority to take action, and that the school was “deliberately indifferent” in its response.

Ms. DeVos has proposed to adopt the “severe and pervasive” standard for sexual harassment, along with legal standards that would hold school administrators responsible only if they had “actual knowledge” of sexual misconduct and were “deliberately indifferent.” Those standards are based on Supreme Court precedent and used in Title IX court cases already. But in administrative hearings, they would significantly raise the bar for holding schools liable for addressing misconduct compared with looser processes outlined by the Obama administration.

The new rules preserve some longstanding Title IX requirements, including schools’ obligation to have a Title IX coordinator and an established investigative process. They also outline new “supportive measures” for victims, even if they do not file complaints. They would, however, eliminate an Obama-era requirement that held schools liable for incidents that occur off campus and outside of a school-sponsored program or activity — a change that, had it been in place, would have technically alleviated Holland Christian of its obligation to respond to the claim.

