Title IX & Independent Investigations

When misconduct allegations reach a formal process, the institution's obligation shifts. The question is no longer how to defend an outcome; it is how to run a process that is fair to every participant and defensible to anyone who examines it later: a reviewing court, the Office for Civil Rights, or the parties themselves. That work requires a neutral, and it requires one with the experience to get both the facts and the procedure right.

Benjamin J. Treger conducts independent investigations and serves as a Title IX hearing officer and appeals officer for multiple University of California campuses. He is a member of the Association of Workplace Investigators, and he brings more than a decade of employment litigation experience to bear on questions of evidence, credibility, and procedure. In every neutral engagement, the commitment is the same: impartial fact-finding, rigorous analysis, and written decisions that hold up under scrutiny.

Each role below is performed separately. Conflicts are screened before every engagement, and role separation is maintained matter by matter, as the regulations require.

I investigate allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and other misconduct for educational institutions and employers. Engagements range from single-complaint matters to large-scale investigations involving multiple respondents and dozens of witnesses.

The method comes from litigation. I have spent more than a decade litigating harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and wage claims in state and federal forums, which means I have examined witnesses under oath, defended investigation files against skilled opposing counsel, and watched carelessly built reports come apart in deposition. I know the questions a plaintiff's lawyer, a defense lawyer, and a judge will each ask of an investigation, because I have spent my career asking and answering them. Every interview plan, every credibility finding, and every report is built with those questions already in mind.

Institutions typically retain an external investigator when the matter involves senior personnel, when internal staff have a conflict or the appearance of one, or when the stakes make an unimpeachable process essential. A scope of engagement generally includes:

• Intake review and investigation planning against the applicable policy and procedures
• Party and witness interviews, conducted with care for the wellbeing of every participant
• Collection and analysis of documentary, electronic, and physical evidence
• Credibility assessments with stated, evidence-based reasons
• A written report with findings of fact tied to the governing policy, built for review by hearing officers, courts, and regulators

I am a member of the Association of Workplace Investigators, and the habit that matters most in this work predates any credential: treating every file as one that will someday be read aloud, line by line, by someone looking for its weaknesses. The measure of an investigation is not the conclusion it reaches; it is whether the process and the reasoning survive challenge. Mine are built to.

The 2020 Title IX regulations require postsecondary institutions to resolve formal complaints through a live hearing, with cross-examination conducted by each party's advisor and relevance rulings made in real time by the decision-maker. The regulations also require the decision-maker to be someone other than the investigator or the Title IX coordinator. For many institutions, the practical answer is an external hearing officer.

Mr. Treger serves as a Title IX hearing officer for multiple University of California campuses. The role rewards a particular kind of experience. Ruling on relevance in real time, managing advocates who test the boundaries of the process, and keeping a proceeding orderly without making it cold: these are courtroom skills, and he brings them from more than a decade of adversarial practice. A trial lawyer learns to make evidentiary calls in the moment and to explain them on the record. A hearing officer must do exactly that, in front of two parties, their advisors, and a transcript that will be read closely on appeal.

Hearing officer engagements include:

• Pre-hearing review of the investigation record and evidentiary submissions
• Conducting the live hearing: managing advisors, ruling on relevance, and maintaining a fair and orderly proceeding for all parties
• Credibility determinations grounded in the record, not in demeanor alone
• A written determination of responsibility that applies the correct standard of proof, addresses the evidence on each allegation, and states the rationale for each finding

Credibility is usually the heart of the case, and it is where a litigation background shows most. Years of examining witnesses and testing testimony against documents turn credibility analysis into a discipline rather than an instinct: findings rest on corroboration, consistency, plausibility, and motive, each stated plainly in the written determination so the parties and any later reviewer can see exactly how the decision was reached.

A hearing is where procedural error is most visible and most costly. Running it correctly protects every participant, and it protects the determination itself.

The regulations require institutions to offer both parties an appeal on at least three grounds: procedural irregularity that affected the outcome, new evidence not reasonably available at the time of the determination, and conflict of interest or bias. The appeals decision-maker must be independent of the investigator, the hearing officer, and the Title IX coordinator.

Mr. Treger serves as an appeals officer, and the role draws on the most disciplined part of litigation practice: working within a fixed record. In more than a decade of litigating, he has built and attacked records for a living, and cases are won and lost on what the record actually shows measured against the correct standard of review. That experience produces the habits appellate review demands: close reading of transcripts and exhibits, fidelity to the asserted grounds rather than a general sense of the outcome, and the judgment to distinguish error that affected the result from imperfection that did not. An appeals officer who re-tries the case has failed the parties; so has one who defers to everything. The discipline lies in knowing the difference, ground by ground.

Appeal engagements include:

• Independent review of the determination, the hearing record, and the parties' appeal submissions
• Analysis of each asserted ground against the applicable standard
• A reasoned written decision that resolves the appeal and explains why, in terms the parties and any later reviewer can follow

An appeal decision is often the institution's last chance to catch and correct error before a matter moves to litigation or a federal complaint. It deserves the same rigor as everything that came before it.