The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concern Title IX – part of the Education Amendments in 1972 that prevents sex discrimination in any educational institution receiving funding from the federal government. Fifty years after Title IX became law, the Biden administration proposed a new rule that would gut the protections for women and girls guaranteed by Title IX.
No person in the United States shall, on the
basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or
be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity
receiving Federal financial assistance.
The Biden administration’s new rule
will change Title IX drastically by extending the protections originally meant
for biological women and girls to biological males who claim to be females.
Sarah Parshall Perry has four chief problems with the new Biden rule.
1.
The proposed rule expands the definition of “sex” to
include “gender
identity.”
What does this mean for American school
girls and young women? It means that any K-12 school, college, or university receiving
direct or indirect federal funding would have to open its bathrooms, locker
rooms, housing accommodations, and any other sex-separated educational program
or offering to someone who is biologically of the opposite sex.
2.
The proposed rule will eliminate due process
protections for students
accused of sexual harassment or sexual
assault.
After thorough consideration of over
124,000 public comments and in response to a growing crisis of sexual violence
in education, the department under the previous administration issued a Title
IX rule in 2020 that clarified that sexual harassment, including sexual
assault, constituted unlawful sex discrimination.
That rule provided important provisions
ensuring due process in campus Title IX grievance proceedings that protect free
speech and academic freedom.
Among other things, the 2020 rule requires
colleges to provide live hearings and allow both the accused and complainant
student’s advisers to cross-examine parties and witnesses involved.
Institutions must also presume that those accused of sexual misconduct are
innocent prior to the investigative and decision-making process….
3. The proposed rule will install a “heckler’s
veto” at schools that are federally funded by forcing students, teachers, and
professors to toe the line on a woke, sexual orthodoxy or be faced with a Title
IX federal complaint.
Title IX complaints filed by hypersensitive
students claiming to have felt sexually harassed by otherwise innocent speech
made by professors and students were rising prior to the department’s 2020
rule.
Currently, campus speech – such as
discussion of sexual issues – is not considered harassing just because it is “pervasive”;
and let’s face it, debates and discussions about sex and gender tend to be
fairly pervasive on college campuses.
To constitute verbal sexual harassment,
the speech must not only be pervasive, it must also be severe enough in nature
to deny or limit a “person’s ability to participate in or benefit from the
recipient's education program or activity.” …
4. The proposed rule quietly removes
protections for religious institutions that adhere to a traditional belief on
sexuality, gender, and marriage by eliminating previous protections that were
reaffirmed as recently as 2020.
When the Obama administration issued
guidance in 2010 that included LGBTQ people within Title IX’s sex
discrimination definitions, many religious schools began to seek Title IX’s
statutory religious exemption.
These institutions saw the writing on the
wall with the Obama administration’s aggressive expansion of Title IX’s
application and sought assurances they wouldn’t be forced – in violation of
their sincerely held religious tenets and teachings – to hire same-sex couples
who live together openly, to open single-sex dorms to members of the opposite
sex, or to fling wide their bathrooms for individuals whose subjective
self-gender identity runs counter to their biology….
Perry concluded that “the Biden
administration is pursuing a radical agenda and proposing a change to our laws
and to our educational system that will do irreversible and long-lasting harm
to women, girls, the wrongly accused, our faith institutions, and freedom of
speech.” She urges all Americans to act to defeat the new Title IX rule.
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