TITLE IX:
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
This week, the Biden administration unlawfully rewrote Title IX regulations in a move that will doubtlessly harm female students, destroy equal opportunity for women in sports, and infringe on parental rights.
Title IX was established in 1972 to directly address sex discrimination in academics, because both the Civil Rights Act and Title IV failed to fill the gap and left women and girls vulnerable. Title IX’s nondiscrimination mandate exists to hold educational institutions accountable and provide legal protections for women who have experienced sex-based discrimination, such as: “sex-based harassment; sexual violence; pregnancy discrimination; the failure to provide equal athletic opportunity; sex-based discrimination in a school’s science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses and programs; discriminatory application of dress code policies and/or enforcement; and retaliation.”
The Biden administration’s modifications to this decades-old statute attempt to redefine “sex” in federal law to mean “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” rather than biological reality. In fact, Biden officials inserted the term “gender identity” 289 times in the 1,577-page document, where it was (rightfully) not once mentioned before.
Now, men who say they are women (whether they are “female presenting” or not) can claim the Title IX protections originally intended for women and girls because of their historically vulnerable position in education and sports – which still rings true to this day, thanks to the woke agenda prioritizing delusional men over the safety of biological females. Biden stripped women of their final legal refuge at a time when Title IX is needed more than ever to protect women disadvantaged by men pretending to be women. Once again, the Left has revealed its true colors.
Under Biden’s new rules, any member of the LGBT community can now cry “discrimination” under Title IX provisions for any of the following reasons: “sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.” Knowing what we do about liberal college students, we expect Title IX reporting rates will skyrocket over every perceived injustice and act of discrimination – which could be as simple as a classmate not using a student’s “preferred pronoun,” accident or not.
“Title IX deals with discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender identity or sexual orientation, and was rightly enacted to ensure women had equal opportunity in academics and athletics. Now, by unlawfully rewriting this federal statute, President Biden is threatening to erode those advancements, which women have long fought to achieve,” ADF Senior Counsel Christiana Kiefer explained. “Sadly, it’s not just female athletes who will suffer from this radical overreach of executive authority. Doctors could be forced to perform medical procedures that violate their conscience, school districts could undermine parents by concealing vital information about their child’s health, and public universities will be able to censor and compel students’ speech. We urge the Department of Education to abandon its proposed rule and respect the most fundamental freedoms upon which every American relies.” (emphasis added)
