This piece was written by Ginny Gentles, director of IWF’s Education Freedom Center. Originally appeared in The Federalist.
In a call with reporters last week, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona disingenuously claimed that the Biden administration’s sweeping new Title IX rule makes “crystal clear that everyone can access schools that are safe, welcoming and that respect their rights.” Actually, the new Title IX regulations socially engineer every component of the educational environment to create dangerous and unwelcoming schools for girls and young women, while also undermining parents who affirm biological reality.
Despite the common misconception that Title IX simply protects women’s collegiate sports, it is a robust anti-discrimination mandate that prohibits federally funded educational institutions — early childhood, K-12, educational programs, and higher education — from discriminating “on the basis of sex.” Title IX, which was enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972, states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, [emphasis added] 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.”
The Biden administration’s recently finalized 1,577-page regulations dramatically expand Title IX’s statutory protections for sex discrimination by redefining “sex” to include so-called gender identity, sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, pregnancy, and sex characteristics. But, as the vast majority of Americans know, “sex” (sometimes incorrectly referred to as gender) is not the same as “gender identity.” As The Washington Post acknowledged last year, polling reveals, “Most Americans don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth.”
Ending Free Speech
Title IX was intended to ensure women are treated fairly and have educational opportunities, not to pave the way for males claiming an alternative “gender identity” to access women’s scholarships and spaces. It also wasn’t supposed to be used to curtail protected speech by punishing students and teachers for using biologically false pronouns.
That’s right: When Biden’s Title IX rule takes effect on Aug. 1, using the “wrong” (e.g., biologically accurate) pronouns will be considered “sex-based harassment” and a federal civil rights violation worthy of investigation and discipline.
Undermining Parents
On top of allowing males to self-identify into women’s spaces and opportunities, destabilizing educational environments, and curtailing free speech, the behemoth Title IX rule also undermines parents. Under the new Title IX regime, school districts likely will assume that policies that hide emotionally vulnerable children’s gender confusion from parents, already in place in thousands of schools around the country, are now federally required.
Under these parental-exclusion policies, when a child decides to embrace a new name, identity, and set of pronouns, school staff swiftly craft “gender support plans” that codify the child’s new identity and determine the bathrooms, locker rooms, and sleeping arrangements for overnight trips the child will use. The child determines if school staff should actively hide the new name and identity from the parents, uniting the entire school community against the parents as the school secretly shoves the child down a dangerous path of social and likely irreversible and harmful medical transition.
Although the administration’s Title IX rule commentary claims that “nothing in these final regulations prevents a recipient from disclosing information about a minor child to their parent who has the legal right to receive disclosures on behalf of their child,” the rule directly instructs schools to update their internal gender identity policies and points to examples of state and district policies that explicitly require schools to hide a child’s chosen identity from his or her parents.
Investigating ‘Sex-Based Harassment’
Under the new rule, if a middle school student feels that his teacher has not hidden his “gender fluid” identity sufficiently from his parents, the district could treat it as a Title IX violation. The school district’s Title IX coordinator would investigate to avoid facing a federal investigation or losing federal funding.
As WebMD states, “A person who is gender fluid may identify as male one day, female the next, both male and female, or neither.” So, that same middle school student’s pronouns will shift unceasingly (until he embraces a different gender identity or accepts biological reality), putting every student and teacher at risk of violating Title IX if they don’t use that day’s “correct” pronouns.
Alarmingly, the regulations state that “sex-based harassment” that occurs outside of school could be considered a Title IX violation if the behavior contributes to a hostile environment at school. The final rule responds to stakeholders’ concerns about administrative overreach by doubling down, stating that schools have an obligation to address a “hostile environment,” “even when some conduct alleged to be contributing to the hostile environment occurred outside the recipient’s education program or activity.”
So if a child claims she is unhappy that her parents are gently questioning why she suddenly considers herself to be a boy, a school could interpret the parents’ belief in biological reality as a Title IX violation. Although the regulations pay lip service to parental rights, the administration also instructs schools to coordinate with a child “and their parent, as appropriate” [emphasis added] on a case-by-case basis.
School districts’ Title IX coordinators are going to be extremely powerful people as they launch investigations and create and implement policies that ensure radical gender ideology is enforced at all levels of education and in students’ homes.
Parental Rights
Even though many children struggling with gender identity have special needs, the new rule throws federal laws that involve their parents out the window. The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) guarantees parents’ rights to inspect and review their children’s educational records, and the federal Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) requires that parents be included in the decision-making process when schools determine how to address a child’s needs.
The Biden regime acknowledges these long-standing federal protections, but the Title IX rule specifically states that “requirements of Title IX override any conflicting FERPA provisions.” The Biden administration also claims that the new Title IX regulations overrule numerous state laws that protect parental rights, undermining the authority of state legislatures and parents.
Parents do not turn children over to federally controlled government schools and assume that the school will make decisions that affect their children’s emotional and physical health without parental input. As parents, we have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing, care, and education of our children. We’re not going to let the Biden administration’s outrageous Title IX rule change that.
Independent Women’s Law Center is suing the Biden administration over Title IX.
