How Biden is planning to up-end Title IX

Earlier this month, Biden’s Department of Education finally submitted its proposed Title IX rule changes over to the White House for review. Biden’s DoE has been hard at work to unravel Title IX rules made by its secretary under the Trump administration, Betsy DeVos. DeVos, you might recall, had enshrined all sorts of due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct on campus amid a spate of high-profile false accusations.

There was an apoplectic meltdown from the left when DeVos rolled out these changes because they believed there was a “rape culture” on campus where one in four women would be the victim of rape — or one in three, depending on who you ask — and that a few men having their lives ruined over a false accusation was a small price to pay to hold all of the rapists accountable. Many people have helpfully documented why the cries of “rape culture” are not backed by evidence (Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers has broken it down many times, and I also did so in my book) and the horrible things that happen when the accused on campus are denied due process.  

The proposed Biden changes to Title IX on sexual assault and misconduct are disturbing enough. But the Biden DoE also intends to amend Title IX so that protections go beyond sex to also cover gender identity. These changes are currently being reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget. William Trachman, an attorney who served as the deputy assistant secretary for civil rights in the Trump administration, wrote about the high stakes of this move for the Federalist: 

It is one thing to suggest that schools ought to enforce anti-discrimination principles with respect to transgender individuals. But it is another thing to suggest schools must accept, validate and accommodate every student’s self-proclaimed gender identity and sexual orientation or else be adjudicated to have violated federal civil rights laws. The Biden administration’s proposed rule would do exactly this.

Trachman points out potential scenarios in which school officials might have their hands tied by Title IX regulations that cover sexual orientation or gender identity: nonbinary students might demand separate dorms because male and female dorms are insufficient, gender-fluid students might switch back and forth between male and female locker rooms on a daily basis, and schools would be forced to “affirm” students who identify as animals or other strange, made-up genders. These examples might sound crazy, but conservatives were once ridiculed for predicting that federal legalization of gay marriage would lead to societal acceptance of all kinds of immoral sexual behavior.

If the slippery slope argument doesn’t appeal to you, even the basic case of a boy who identifies as a girl demonstrates the problem with these new Title IX rules. Under the Biden administration changes would require schools treat gender identity as conclusive for assigning students “restrooms, locker rooms, shower facilities, housing, athletic teams and single-sex classes.” In practice, this means that schools would be violating federal law if they refuse to allow boys into girls’ locker rooms, bathrooms, showers, dorm rooms, et cetera. It would be entirely illegal to have sex-segregated spaces of any kind. College and high school-aged women have already been forced by some cowardly school administrators to change in front of men. Biden’s Title IX rules would make this ubiquitous. Vulnerable young girls and women across the country would be exposed to members of the opposite sex without their consent. 

All of this comes, by the way, as more people are speaking out about the lack of evidentiary support for “gender-affirming care” for minors. The same day the Biden DoE submitted its final Title IX rule to the OMB, Pamela Paul at the New York Times published her lengthy investigation into “detransitioners”, mostly young adults who had or believed they had gender dysphoria as children, underwent “treatment” and then realized they had made a mistake. Studies show desistance rates for minors can be as high as nine in ten.

“Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism, especially by pressing for a treatment orthodoxy that has faced increasedscrutiny in recent years. Under that model of care, clinicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress,” Paul writes. “Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach — including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures — have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns.”

The American College of Pediatricians, or ACPeds, is an alternative professional organization for pediatricians who have found themselves troubled by the medical establishment’s reflexive acceptance of a gender-affirming model for children, and more broadly, their dependence on pharmaceutical interventions for all kinds of mental disorders. Last week, the ACPeds released a statement rejecting that there is any demonstrated benefit to “social transition, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones” for minors with gender dysphoria. The ACPeds statement was based on a review of at least sixty research papers aimed at studying the relationship between gender transitions and mental health.

The Biden DoE working to enshrine gender identity as a protected category under Title IX is thus a double-edged sword. It would require schools adopt the gender-affirming model for students with gender dysphoria, which will lead scores of children to physical and mental ruin, while also violating rights and safety of female students. That is precisely the opposite of what Title IX was intended to achieve.