E.L.D. Cornerstone.  Life in words & pictures

July 8, 2015

 A sexual assault awareness group is calling on President Obama to revoke the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to Bill Cosby in 2002, now that there have been allegations the 77-year-old comedian is a serial rapist.

The request raises thorny legal and political questions for a White House that has long championed sexual assault prevention. While the president can change the criteria for granting the nation's highest civilian honor with the stroke of a pen, no president has ever revoked the award once given.

"Certainly it is an unprecedented thing to take this away," said Angela Rose, founder of Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment, a decade-old sexual assault education and prevention group. "But it's also an unprecedented thing that this legend, this icon, over 40 women have accused this man, and that's unprecedented as well."

PAVE submitted a petition to the White House Wednesday. If it gets 100,000 electronic signatures in the next month, the White House has promised a formal response.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said he was unaware of the calls to revoke the medal when asked by reporters Wednesday.

"I haven't, at this point, heard any discussion of taking that step," he said. "I don't know whether or not it's legally possible to do so."

Unlike the Medal of Honor for military valor, the Medal of Freedom isn't authorized by Congress. President Truman established it by executive order in 1945 to recognize civilians who helped the war effort. President Kennedy expanded it in 1963 to include people who have made contributions through "cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

And so President George W. Bush awarded the medal to Cosby in 2002, in a class that also included baseball great Hank Aaron, children's television pioneer Fred Rogers and former First Lady Nancy Reagan.

"Bill Cosby is a gifted comedian who has used the power of laughter to heal wounds and to build bridges,"Bush said in awarding the medal. "By focusing on our common humanity, Bill Cosby is helping to create a truly united America."

In a court deposition unsealed this week, Cosby admitted to drugging women he wanted to sleep with, and dozens of women have alleged he assaulted them going back five decades.

Other than the medal itself, the Medal of Honor is symbolic and carries no benefits, so it's unclear how it would be revoked.

"There's a huge amount of uncertainty here," said Kenneth Mayer, a presidential scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While he said it's probably within the president's power to disavow the honor, getting the physical medal back might be another matter now that Cosby owns it.

Revoking Cosby's medal would also create a precedent that could have repercussions for future presidents and honorees, so it's not something the White House would likely do lightly, Mayer said.

"Even if there's a legal ability to do this, it's not a road that people want to start going down," he said. "There are titanic issues of presidential power that have arisen by what seemed at the time like trivial circumstances."