Biden’s Obsession With Pushing Gender Ideology Reflected in Latest Title IX Rules
Last month the Biden administration issued final rules related to Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education, to include — you guessed it — sexual orientation and gender identity.
It’s yet another example of the administration’s obsession with pushing gender ideology at the expense of women and girls. Fortunately, religious colleges and universities can respond to this madness by restating church teaching in their demand to be exempt.
Some background: Title IX is a federal civil rights law that bans sex discrimination against students, employees and others affiliated with schools or any other education program that receives federal funding. But it says nothing about sexual orientation or gender identity, so how can the administration justify this overreach?
The government points to a 2020 Supreme Court decision dealing with a different federal law. In Bostock v. Clayton County, a sharply divided Court interpreted discrimination “because of sex” under Title VII, the law prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, to encompass discrimination because of an individual’s sexual orientation and gender identity.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the Court’s majority, justified the sweeping expansion of the law by asserting that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” Dismissing concerns that the Court’s decision would “sweep beyond Title VII to other federal or state laws that prohibit sex discrimination,” Gorsuch wrote that “none of these other laws are before us; we have not had the benefit of adversarial testing about the meaning of their terms, and we do not prejudge any such question today.”
Ignoring the expressed limits of the Bostock ruling, on his first day in office President Biden instructed all government agencies to consider Bostock’s reasoning as applying to any law prohibiting sex discrimination. Title IX and its implementing regulations were specifically listed in the executive order.
Lawsuits have already been filed by several states and a school district contesting the new rule. Attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom, counsel for the Rapides Parish School Board in Louisiana, assert that “[t]he Department of Education’s fundamental and radical rewriting of federal law forces schools across the country to embrace a controversial gender ideology that harms children — including the very children it claims to help.” The group adds that the lawsuit is “the first of multiple lawsuits ADF plans to file challenging the rule.”
Religious colleges and universities that receive federal funding can also push back by insisting they are exempt. You see, Title IX does not apply to an educational institution that is controlled by a religious organization to the extent that its application would be inconsistent with the religious tenets of the organization. This objection offers an added benefit: the opportunity for these schools to offer religious instruction to their students.