Biden Administration’s Changes to Title IX Threaten Women’s Spaces and Rights

The Biden administration’s Department of Education unveiled a sweeping set of rules on Friday that effectively erase protections for sex-based spaces by expanding the Title IX prohibition against sex discrimination to include “gender identity” — a term that’s never mentioned in the original law.

A majority of Americans agree that males who claim to identify otherwise should not be allowed to infiltrate girls’ and women’s sports teams. As of now, some 25 states have laws or regulations aimed at keeping boys and men out of female-only spaces, on and off the field.

Yet, come Aug. 1, the Democrat regime’s radial redefinition of “sex-based discrimination” poses a threat to sex-based protections and welcomes males into female spaces including athletic competitions, locker rooms, and sex-specific clubs such as sororities, despite state laws.

“The final regulations will help to ensure that all students receive appropriate support when they experience sex discrimination and that recipients’ procedures for investigating and resolving complaints of sex discrimination are fair to all involved,” the rules claim.

The regulations do even more damage, however, such as by undoing Trump-era due process safeguards for those accused of sexual misconduct, which could include merely using accurate pronouns. They also encroach on parents’ rights and threaten academic free speech by incentivizing schools to censor students and teachers with traditional views on sex and marriage so they don’t lose federal funding.

In the regulations, the Biden administration openly admits it relied on the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision to inform its rulemaking. In that case, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch joined their Democrat-nominated colleagues to expand the prohibition against employment discrimination based on “sex” to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

A draft of the rules released in June 2022 received a “record number” of comments from Americans warning that enacting such extensive provisions and redefining terms like “sexual harassment” would bully schools into mandating the spread of radical gender ideology.

In response to Biden’s Department of Education ignoring some 240,000 comments, “a coalition of organizations” including the Independent Women’s Forum and Independent Women’s Law Center are suing the administration, according to an IWF press release. In 2022 and 2023, those groups sent legal and policy objections to the new rule.

“Title IX was designed to give women equal opportunities in academic settings. It forbids discrimination on the basis of ‘sex,’ which it affirms throughout the statute is binary and biological. The unlawful Omnibus Regulation re-imagines Title IX to permit the invasion of women’s spaces and the reduction of women’s rights in the name of elevating protections for ‘gender identity,’ which is contrary to the text and purpose of Title IX,” Director of Independent Women’s Law Center May Mailman said, noting the rules are illegal.