State Rep. Earl Ehrhart has taken his criticism of how colleges handle sexual misconduct cases a step further.

This week, Ehrhart and his wife Virginia, sued the U.S. Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights over its guidance to colleges and universities on handling these cases.

The couple says the federal department’s policies have caused colleges to spend spend taxpayer dollars unnecessarily, because they must abide by the rules or risk losing federal funding.

Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, has been an outspoken critic of the way colleges, specifically Georgia Tech, handles these cases, and claimed that policies at the school on investigating and appealing such cases did not treat students accused of wrongdoing fairly.

“The best way to solve the concerns I’ve had is to go after this source,” he said about the federal lawsuit. “One of the biggest things in Georgia we deal with is how much we pay for higher education. There are massive legal departments that go toward dealing with this issue and enforcing rules put on them by the federal government that many times don’t lead to due process for all parties involved.”