White House Gets an Earful in Public Comments About Changes to Title IX

In July, the Biden administration asked for public comments on changes it wants to make to Title IX regulations that would conflate gender identity with biological sex and extend federal civil rights protections currently afforded women to transgender students.The administration has, to say the least, gotten an earful.On Monday, the period of public comments for the regulatory changes closes. So far, the Department of Education has received more than 200,000 comments — many of them expressing concern that the proposed rules chip away at the rights of biological women, and others supportive of the changes.It’s impossible to gauge how many of the comments oppose or support the new measures without reading each individually on the website set up to receive them, but the number of comments including the word “favor” numbers around 1,500 and the number of comments that use the word “opposed” is more than 43,000.Earlier this year, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona announced plans to roll back changes to the Title IX regulations made during the administration of President Trump.The rules stem from a 1972 law prohibiting discrimination based on sex at any school that receives federal funding. It was originally intended to address disparities between male and female sports programs, but in the years since has morphed into a catch-all covering everything from sexual harassment to civil rights to affirmative action on campus.The Obama administration extended Title IX protections to transgender students in addition to women, but Mr. Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, reversed that ruling in the interest of protecting the rights of students accused of sexual harassment. The earlier rules, she said, placed an undue burden on the accused. The Biden administration has proposed reversing course yet again, overhauling how schools respond to sexual harassment claims. The new rules would also codify once again protections for transgender students that the Trump administration repealed.In the interim, a number of Republican-led states have passed laws specifying who is entitled to use which public restrooms, which athletes are allowed to participate in which sports, and barring lesson plans that incorporate gender ideology issues in younger grades. Many of those behind the new laws said the Biden administration’s push for transgender rights via Title IX spawned the legislative action. Politicians from red swaths of the country have weighed in on the changes now being proposed and encouraged their constituents to do the same. In his own comments to the Education Department, Nebraska’s Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, said the changes envisioned will undermine parents’ rights, weaken local control of education, and discriminate against women.The proposed policy change, Mr. Ricketts said, “ends the separation of restrooms, locker rooms, and other intimate facilities based on biological sex and instead would separate based on gender identity. This change disregards the actual law, history, and purpose of Title IX, as well as science and biology.”Along with the thousands of comments opposed to the measure received by the Department of Education, there are hundreds of comments in favor of them. Many of those express a desire to protect transgender students from harassment or discrimination.“There is no need to monitor, restrict, or ban [transgender students’] participation in activities, because they are kids and deserve to have fun in school, just like their cisgender classmates,” one comment reads. “Trans youth attempt and commit suicide at significantly higher rates than cis youth; I am more concerned for their health and lives than I am about preserving the supposed integrity of athletics.”A coalition of 20 Democratic attorneys general also commented in favor of the changes. Speaking for the group, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, applauded the Biden administration’s efforts to unravel the “missteps of the Trump era” and strengthen protections against sexual discrimination.“It’s 2022 and we’re still cleaning up the Trump Administration’s mess,” Mr. Bonta said. “Students are entitled by law to be free from sexual violence and harassment, and they deserve a process that keeps them safe. The current proposed regulations offer a strong, robust framework to deliver on that promise.”A separate coalition of 15 Republican attorneys general have weighed in on the other side. Led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, the group said Mr. Cardona’s rulemaking would conflict with state laws such as one in Montana restricting biological males who identify as women from participating in womens’ athletics and unjustly impose the Democrats’ gender agenda on local school districts.“We are also concerned that an interpretation of Title IX that goes beyond sex to include gender identity has and will be used by to improperly intrude into parental decision-making regarding the education and upbringing of their children,” Knudsen and the attorneys general wrote. “An interpretation of Title IX that supports such radical positions runs contrary to the role of the Department of Education, the text of Title IX, and parents’ constitutional right to decide what is in the best interests of their children.”

White House Gets an Earful in Public Comments About Changes to Title IX

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