On March 5, 2024, the U.S. Department of Education issued Liberty University a $14 million fine over its violation of the Clery Act for its handling of sexual assault allegations. Liberty also violated the Clery Act in 2010, and the latest review found the school failed to initiate and sustain remedial action from those findings.
The penalty is the largest Clery fine in history, dwarfing the Department’s second-largest $4.5 million fine levied against Michigan State University in 2019 over its systemic failure to address longstanding sexual abuse allegations made against former sports doctor Larry Nassar. Before that, the largest fine was $2.4 million against Penn State in 2016 for its mishandling of abuse claims against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
The increase from 2019 to 2024 begs the question: Why have Clery violation fines grown exponentially in recent years?
Kyle Norton, director of regulatory compliance at the Healy+ Group, told Campus Safety the easiest answer is inflation (00:52). According to the CPI Inflation Calculator from the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, $100 in 2019 has the same buying power as $122.53 in 2024. More industry-specific reasons are a greater focus on violations related to the Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA) and a different presidential administration (01:19).
“We’re in 2024, so any institution from this point going forward with a program review in place is entirely within the post-VAWA amendments for those review periods. So I think that one of the things that you saw from the Liberty [final program review determinations] was a focus on those VAWA-specific violations and how the enforcement of those has increased over time as well,” Norton said. “I think on the broader spectrum, what we’re seeing and what others are really interested to know about is this paradigm shift with the Department of Education and how they are enforcing the law using these larger fines as a deterrent. And it’s not that the authority was never there, they had that authority, but just that was not the way the previous administrations pursued those findings.”
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Amy Rock Editorial, LLC 