The Biden Administration Just Changed Title IX—Here's Everything You Need To Know
Mere days after President Biden said he wants “our daughters [to have] the same opportunities as our sons,” the Department of Education released a Title IX rule erasing the distinction between men and women. With Biden's new rule in place, students, teachers, and universities across the nation should be prepared to suffer serious consequences.
Title IX, a federal civil rights law enacted in 1972, has been a cornerstone in the fight against sex discrimination in education. However, the Biden administration recently rammed through extensive changes that will effectively unravel any progress made over the past 50 years.
The rule, born from hurried decisions within the Department of Education, not only strips away vital protections for girls and women in nearly every educational setting but also undermines due process rights for those accused of sexual assault or harassment.
Sarah Parshall Perry, a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, accurately predicted the results of Biden's changes last year: "The proposed rule would erase the legal status of and protections for girls and women in nearly every educational institution in the country. It would remove commonsense student protections in campus sexual assault and harassment proceedings – and return investigative power to the hands of a single, unelected bureaucrat. It would muzzle students and professors through the initiation of opportunistic Title IX complaints. It would pit males against females once again – and perpetuate the type of discrimination it claims to eliminate."
Now, the "proposed rules" are the rules, at least until they are challenged in the courts.
The most alarming change to note is the redefinition of sex in civil rights law to include "gender identity," which will expose girls and women across the country to men in their bathrooms, sports teams, locker rooms, and housing accommodations. For those who say this interpretation of the change is "extreme" or inaccurate, the new rules by Biden specifically state that locker rooms and bathrooms must be based on gender identity.
It's also important to note that the rule changes are not limited to colleges. They apply to all schools that receive federal funding, so that includes public schools, programs, and daycares.
Additionally, under these new rules, forced use of someone's "preferred" pronouns is now mandatory, and any non-compliance within the schools will be met with "discipline." Many are pointing out that this is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment since it compels speech.
Unsurprisingly, the new rule also contains language that suggests ideologues and activists within the schools will be able to further undermine a parent's right to know what the school is doing to their child when it comes to gender-related distress.
Another rule change will reinstate Obama-era kangaroo court rules for students accused of sexual assault on college campuses by obliterating due process. Now, any accusation of assault or harassment can be evaluated "subjective and objectively." The old law said it must be "objectively" offensive. Additionally, now "the decision maker of the investigation gets to decide what evidence is impermissible," and no live hearing is required. In a nutshell, this means that any accusation of harassment can be brought forth with "subjective" evidence, the outcome can be solely determined by one person, and the accuser never has to face the accused in an actual hearing.
What's also disturbing is the Biden administration's inability to explain why such drastic and deeply problematic changes were needed in the first place.
In contrast, the Trump administration's efforts to clarify Title IX rules in 2020 were mostly met with optimism. Those rules aimed to provide due process protections for all parties involved in Title IX grievance proceedings while holding educational institutions accountable for addressing instances of sexual harassment and assault.
As Inez Feltman at Independent Women's Forum wrote, "Each one of these changes itself would be a five-alarm fire, and in many cases represent unconstitutional curtailment of established rights, rights federal courts have consistently upheld. These changes will be challenged in court. But it’s a good reminder of the enormous power of bureaucracy to massively change American law and curtail all of our rights overnight."
Many critics are pointing out that Biden's changes not only completely ignore the original intent of Title IX but actually directly work against it by creating an unsafe environment. That, plus the authoritarian effect on free speech and lack of due process, has many people hoping the changes will be revoked once they're challenged in court.
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