The Warping Of Title IX: How Title Ix Has Been Weaponized, Contrary To Its Intended Purpose, Since Its Passing 50 Years Ago

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Law Firm: Binnall Law Group
• Subject Matter: Employment and HR, Consumer Protection, Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment, Discrimination, Disability & Sexual Harassment, Education, Sport
• Author: Mr Ben North
• Published date: 26 April 2023

This week marks the 50^th anniversary of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Enacted as a follow up to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title IX was intended to prevent sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. Senator Birch Bayh, one of the primary proponents of the bill, said that Title IX was intended to "close [a] loophole" left by the Civil Rights Act.

Title IX is well known for its huge impact on sports, requiring high schools, colleges, and universities to invest in women's sports teams and support women athletes - a worthy goal. When Title IX was passed, women's sports teams received only a modest two percent of high school and college athletic budgets. Title IX resulted in a surge of support for women's sports, allowing women to participate in the benefits of physical fitness, competition, and being part of a team like never before. Today, nearly 56 percent of college students are women; in high school, women comprise 42 percent of athletes.

Fifty years later, the Biden Administration would rather gut Title IX through radical reinterpretations to achieve the Administration's social goals. In that process, it threatens to destroy women's sports altogether by giving an unfair biological advantage to some athletes over others instead of creating an equal playing field as it was originally intended.

Allowing biological males to compete in women's sports threatens to eliminate women's sports as well as the privacy of female athletes. "Males enjoy physical performance advantages over females within competitive sport. . . the performance gap between males and females becomes significant at puberty and often amounts to 10-50% depending on sport," observed the authors of a recent paper in Sports Medicine. Allowing biological males to compete for medals and scholarships on women's teams before or after "transitioning" disadvantages women athletes.

The Administration has reinterpreted Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity, which places women back on the sidelines both in sports as well as on campus. President Biden signed Executive Order 13988 in January 2021, during the first days of his presidency. The E.O. began the process of reinterpreting Title IX to allow biological male athletes to compete in women's sports if they identify as transgender. The Department of Education issued a Notice of Interpretation on June 22, 2021 that it would interpret "sex" to include both gender identity and sexual orientation.

The...