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Republicans to Change Title IX to Deny Trans Kids’ Genders
It hurts everyone. If they abolish the Dept. of Education, no one will have sex discrimination protections
In federally funded schools in the United States, Title IX outlaws sex discrimination. The Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling in 2020 decided that Title IX does protect trans students, given that discrimination against trans people is essentially discrimination for gender nonconformity.
A few months after that decision, Trump lost his 2020 reelection campaign. Heather Cox Richardson says that his circle then “turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children.” Soon Moms for Liberty formed to ban books from libraries, while Chris Rufo promoted racist and anti-trans messaging.
In 2021, the Department of Education issued its own rule to clarify that it understands that trans and queer students are indeed protected by Title IX, as the Supreme Court had already ruled.
In April 2024, under President Biden, the Department of Education issued new Title IX rules that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It defines such discrimination as forms of sex discrimination. Had this rule taken effect, it would have invalidated bathroom bans in public schools that had at that point been enacted in 11 states. The AP reported that LGBTQ students would “be entitled to a response from their school under Title IX,” and if the school did not address the issue, they could “seek recourse from the federal government.”
Within a week of Biden’s announcement, officials in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina told schools “to ignore the regulations,” Erin Reed reported, and multiple states are suing the federal government over the matter.
As The Hill reported, 24 states had already “passed laws preventing transgender student-athletes from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.” Though the Biden administration had intended to explicitly invalidate blanket bans on trans athletes, ultimately that provision was not included. Nonetheless, Louisiana in particular argued that the new Title IX…
