Not long before Trump left the White House, his administration made some rather significant changes to Title IX rules regarding sexual assaults on school campuses and how they would be managed.
Joe Biden just shredded those rules, rolling back what many considered to be a major part of Trump’s conservative legacy as president.
Talking Points…
- Trump changes Title IX rules
- Biden rollback
- Analysis
On May 6, 2020, Trump’s Department of Education finally announced its new Title IX rules. The rules would regulate how sexual misconduct cases would be handled on school campuses, primarily in higher education. The rules were blasted by the mainstream media, saying that Trump was making it harder for sexual misconduct victims to come forward and understand their rights in these cases. Title IX states:
“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.”
While the rule itself is but one sentence, each administration generally releases rules on its interpretation of the rule. The new document by the Trump administration was 2,033 pages long, whereas the Obama administration’s rules were a mere 53 pages. Many pundits were upset about the length of the new guidelines, saying it was making it all but impossible for students to understand.
The new revisions more or less destroyed the Trump rule book on this, while not addressing one major issue that Trump and Republicans have been trying to protect from the outset, that being transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. Biden chose to skip this hot button, at least for now.
Biden’s new rules, however, do not completely avoid transgender issues. The rules state that sexual discrimination will now include those instances based on gender identity as well as sexual orientation. It requires schools to treat everyone equally, except for very few exceptions. The new rules will allow bathroom and locker room access based on gender identity. Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines shredded the new rules, stating:
"Title IX was passed over fifty years ago to end unjust discrimination in education, including athletics. I experienced this law [being] undermined when female athletes like myself were told to keep quiet when a male swimmer took home a title in the women’s division and deprived female athletes of awards, honors, and the opportunity to compete.
"With its new Title IX rewrite, the Biden administration is unilaterally erasing fifty years of equal opportunity law for women.”
May Mailman, the Director of the IWF and the Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC), added:
"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. Because this is illegal, we plan to sue."
Biden was clearly sidestepping a key election issue by not addressing transgenders in women’s sports. However, he lit the conservative world on fire with the rest of his changes to the rules. To me, this all comes to competitive fairness and safety in women’s sports, and that will not be the case if we have biological males now competing in these programs.
How many biological women will miss out on scholarships because of this rule? Even if it is one, that is one too many. More concerning to me, however, is the safety of women competing, especially in more physical sports, such as ice hockey, field hockey, lacrosse, martial arts, and boxing, to name a few. At some point, there will be a collision or a punch thrown that will do severe damage to a woman that could have been avoided, and it will have only taken place because this has become a political football for Democrats.
As Gaines hinted, Biden’s rules do not move the women’s movement forward… they set it back significantly by allowing biological men who were middling athletes to now dominate their sport. Simply put, it’s not fair, and it is not safe.
