House passes bill to roll back Biden administration changes to Title IX

Lawmakers on Thursday voted 210-205 to roll back interpretive changes to the landmark women’s rights law known as Title IX that the Biden administration published in April. Title IX previously prohibited discrimination based on biological sex, but the Biden administration’s April rules expanded it to prohibit discrimination based on a person’s perceived gender identity.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Wednesday said that his House Republican coalition voted to roll back the measures in order to protect women’s sports and other exclusively female spaces from the presence of men. Third Way, which describes itself as a center-left think tank, claimed before the vote that rolling back the Biden administration’s rules would harm sexual assault survivors.

Haven’t states been suing to block the enforcement of these new rules? Federal courts in Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Kentucky have blocked the new rules’ enforcement in more than a dozen states. Those states sued the administration, alleging the new rules would harm women and girls.

Dig deeper: Read Catherine Gripp’s report in The Stew about states standing up to the Biden administration’s revision of Title IX.