March is Women’s History Month and ironically the month anticipated for advancing the final approval of the Title IX “Athletics” rules. The proposed rules will imperil women’s sports by protecting male athletes — the antithesis of Title IX’s intent. The changes to Title IX will result in rewriting 50 years of women’s history.
Title IX was established in 1972 to end sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. Title IX is enforced and regulated by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and the proposed new rules are signed by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Last month, the first disturbing set of Title IX rules were sent to President Biden’s Office of Budget and Management for review before becoming a final rule. The “Athletics” Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) similarly is due to move through its final stage of approval this month. This rule is intended to bring “clarity” for “stakeholders” about laws passed in states like West Virginia that limit athletes’ participation in sports according to their biological sex at birth. This limitation is deemed sex discrimination in the proposed Title IX Athletic regulations.
President Biden’s Executive Orders 13988 and 14021 directed the development of both sets of the ominous Title IX rules, which bear the theme of preventing harm to students by not honoring their “gender identity.” In fact, the preamble of the new rule says, “…the Department’s proposed regulation reflects the understanding that students may be harmed significantly [emphasis added] if a school denies them the opportunity to participate in its athletic program consistent with their gender identity.”
The Athletics NPRM suggests reasonable criteria to refuse male participation in female sports may be established to prevent sports-related injury and promote fair competition in collegiate and elite sports. But, it says, it is unlikely any elementary and middle school participation exclusion criteria would comply with the new Athletic regulations. This paradigm is most disturbing because it suggests that very young, vulnerable children who are innocent of false and harmful perceptions about their biological sex, outside of grooming by an adult, will be manipulated for a political agenda.
The harm to these students is not discrimination. The harm is found in the damaging ideologies being spoon-fed to children which will likely lead them to take drugs that stunt normal brain development and potentially agree to the mutilation of their bodies. I say emphatically, this is the harm that is being done to young children and now the federal government seeks to codify the ability for adults to continue to harm children in this way.
Despite public outcry at the erasure of 50 years of precedent, the new rules will unravel the safeguards Title IX offers women and girls in government schools and will instead “protect” “transgender” students. The push to edit Title IX to benefit “transgender women” undermines the very foundation Title IX was built on. By rewriting the policy to protect biological men, these policymakers are trampling upon biological women and kowtowing to the progressive political agenda. Basic biology is clear: men are men and women are women, and no amount of political indoctrination can change this fact. All these policies do is impose harmful ideologies on helpless children and harm young women.
For this very reason, parental rights groups like U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) have been advocating for states to wean themselves off federal funding. The federal government continues to coerce local schools with the threat of withholding federal funding should schools not comply with federal regulations. On average, a state only derives about 10% of its education budget from the federal government and states need to ask themselves if it is worth ceding control of their classrooms and sports programs to ultra-liberal indoctrination and takeover.
USPIE published the “Blueprint to Establish State Control of Education” in June of 2023. The first step in the Blueprint is to do a cost of compliance study to determine how much it costs to comply with federal regulations and assess the actual monetary benefit of federal funding that hamstrings state and local control of education. The Athletics NPRM alone says, “many of the associated costs are not readily quantifiable,” but suggests at a minimum it will cost around $24 million over 10 years.
On the flip side of these absurd policies undermining women’s sports, just last week, over a dozen women athletes along with the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) sued the NCAA for violating Title IX by allowing men to compete against them and using their locker rooms. The ruling in this case could cause the Biden Administration’s new rules to be called into question. I applaud these women athletes and ICONS for their tenacity and their will to stand up for the truth!
As we approach the upcoming 2024 elections, concerned citizens must elect candidates to office who can stop the progression of these outrageous policies. On the local front, parents must get their children out of harm’s way and remove them from government schools. If we don’t all work together to end this madness, there may be no future for this great nation.
Sheri Few is the Founder and President of United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) whose mission is to end the US Department of Education and all federal education mandates. USPIE has established 20 state chapters and is growing rapidly amid the national outcry from parents who want to regain control of their children’s education. Few is a nationally recognized leader on education policy and is often quoted in conservative media. Few has written extensively about critical race theory and served as Executive Producer for the documentary film titled “Truth & Lies in American Education.”
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