A law that now tells lies

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education released its long-delayed Title IX rule—a rewrite so invasive and detrimental that it harms the very people the 52-year-old civil rights law was meant to protect. It tells a lie about reality, eradicates safe spaces for women, restricts free speech for all, and obstructs due process for those accused of a violation.

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act (1972) is quite straightforward and simple. It disallows sex discrimination in any federally funded education program. Yet, the Biden administration has expanded the definition of “sex” to include two concepts absent from the original law—sexual orientation and gender identity.

In response, conservative groups and women’s rights activists immediately objected. The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) and Independent Women’s Law Center have already promised to sue the administration, according to an IWF press release. In 2022 and 2023, both groups sent legal and policy objections to the proposed rule.

“The rule is unlawful. We and a coalition of interested parties will challenge it in court, and it will ultimately be struck down,” said Jennifer Braceras, founder of the Independent Women’s Law Center and a former commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Biden’s Title IX rule tells a lie about reality. A person’s gender is encoded in his or her DNA, thereby innate and immutable. No mutilation of one’s body—no matter how severe and deformative—changes that fact. No hormone therapy—regardless of how extensive or extended—alters that reality. Just as we can’t re-engineer our age, race, or species, we can’t revise our gender.

Why should we be forced to agree with a person who “feels” like the opposite sex? Common sense is that feelings don’t determine reality. There’s a reason hardly anybody buys into Rachel Dolezal’s claim to identify as a black woman since she is clearly not. There’s a reason the law prohibits a 25-year-old from claiming to be 67 and thereby accessing social security. There’s a reason able-bodied people are not allowed to park in the handicapped spot.

Yet, the new Title IX rule ascribes ultimacy to an individual’s feelings about gender, allows that person to tell a lie about reality, and reorganizes the law based on that lie. 

Furthermore, the Biden Title IX rule endangers women’s privacy, safety, and equality. It welcomes males into female spaces such as athletic competitions, locker rooms, campus housing, and sex-specific clubs such as sororities. What parent wants a “woman” with male organs sharing a room with their daughter or competing against her in a sporting event?

“Title IX was meant to protect female students from sex discrimination,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Friday in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Sadly, the Biden administration’s new Title IX rule does the exact opposite and makes it harder for schools to protect women.” Similarly, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., added that “biological women now have zero safe spaces and no real identity.”

With a few blots of ink, the Biden administration has altered the definition of “female” and obliterated the safe spaces that real women should be able to enjoy. The new Title IX rule also threatens free speech. With the expansion of the concept of “sex discrimination” to now include gender identity, the Biden administration paves the way for schools to censor anybody who voices the traditional view that a person’s sex is innate and immutable.

Think about it. It’s not just scores of progressive activist educators who will shutter free speech. It’s also educational administrators of the more moderate type who are concerned about not losing federal funding. The train is coming down the tracks even if you don’t yet see it. Common-sense gender language will be censored in many schools, and free speech will be shuttered.

The unlawfulness of the new Title IX rule doesn’t stop with its anti-scientific definition, its violation of female spaces, or its censorship of free speech. It also eliminates due process protections (such as the rights to be represented by counsel, call witnesses, and produce evidence during an investigation) for students accused of sexual misconduct.

This threat isn’t entirely new. Thanks to new regulations released in June 2022 by the Department of Education, the Biden administration has already abolished rules crafted and implemented by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during the Trump administration. The new regulations mark the return of the “single investigator model,” which empowers a single college administrator to investigate, judge, and sanction alleged misconduct.

But before we conclude, here is some food for thought: The U.S. Department of Education is allotted a $68 billion annual budget. This funding is supposed to be dedicated to offering financial aid, undertaking educational research, evaluating educational challenges, and ensuring equal access to education. Instead, the department has focused its fevered energies on lying about reality, obliterating female spaces, restricting free speech, and obstructing due process. It’s no wonder that our public education system is in decline.