May 15, 2024 |
Photo – Image of gender identities – Courtesy Google images
The State of Wyoming has joined a coalition of states and private parties in a lawsuit opposing President Biden’s new rules that reinterpret Title IX, which is a 1972 law designed to create educational and athletic opportunities, particularly for female students.
President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed by Kansas, Alaska, Utah and Wyoming.
The states charge that the defendants seek “to politicize our country’s educational system to conform to the radical ideological views of the Biden administration and its allies.” The lawsuit argues the new rules are unlawful and contrary to the core principles of Title IX, compromising safety and privacy, and ultimately depriving female athletes of opportunities.
In a statement, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon said, “This is yet another instance of federal overreach, seeking to impose a new interpretation on a longstanding law.”
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder applauded the lawsuit, stating, “in Wyoming, we protect our girls. We will never allow outrageous political agendas to get in the way of that. Not in bathrooms, not in education, not in sports. Period.”
Biden’s new Title IX rule eliminates privacy protections for students, replaces “sex” with “gender identity” and broadens the definition of what constitutes “discrimination on the basis of sex”, which directly contradicts the very purpose of Title IX. The lawsuit further alleges the rule violates the First Amendment rights of educators, school employees and fellow students, as well as private organizations, who hold religious beliefs that would prevent them from complying with the rule. The Biden Administration’s rewrite of Title IX also raises due processes concerns to sexual harassment accusations on college campuses.
The states are suing to protect their continued receipt of federal education funds based on what the lawsuit describes as “biological reality,” as opposed to Biden’s “sleight of hand,” replacing the word “sex” with the undefined concept of “gender identity.”
The states will argue in court that the new regulations are contrary to Title IX’s text and history. They prohibit schools from maintaining sex-separate programs, restrooms and locker rooms for males and females.
The lawsuit also argues that the Biden rule opens the door for biological males to compete on female only sports teams “by prohibiting schools from making decisions based on actual physiological differences in athletic ability. And they remove dignity and privacy protections.”
The states point out the text of Title IX never refers to “gender identity,” but only to sex. The lawsuit points out that legislative attempts to change the law to include protections for “gender identity” have failed.
The lawsuit, nine separate counts, notes that “since the dawn of history, it has been widely recognized that there are two sexes, male and female, which in nearly all cases, can be determined at birth.”
The Biden Administration ignores this fundamental reality, “codifying new theories of gender identity.”
The schools contend that this radical new thinking would require large expenditures of money “to establish new bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities for individuals who do not identify as either male or female.”
The states argue that the Biden administration’s “interpretation” of Title IX is convoluted and implausible.
The plaintiffs are seeking a declaratory judgement that the final rule is unlawful, and the states are not bound to it.
In the lawsuit, the states argue that the Biden Administration’s rewrite of the 50-year-old rule transforms schools “into ideological centers where only the Defendants’ views are allowed to be heard. Plaintiffs sue to prevent this from becoming reality.”
The multi-state complaint is signed by the Attorney General of Kansas, Kris Kobach.
