In a public response released on Monday, a group of Democratic senators pushed the Biden administration to strengthen the Title IX rule’s proposed LGBTQ and abortion provisions.
The Sept. 12 letter from 18 senators, led by Sen. Patty Murray, applauds the administration for expanding the definition of “sexual orientation or gender identity” under Title IX’s federally prohibited sex discrimination and calls on it to “build on this success.”
The senators wrote that the Education Department should “further expand safeguards for LGBTQIA+ students and pregnant and parenting students” and added that they “applaud the Department for taking key strides ahead.”
The 1972-adopted Title IX law shields citizens against sex-based discrimination in educational initiatives or programmes that receive federal financing.
According to Title IX, the senators asked the administration to “clarify the extent of unlawful discrimination” with relation to LGBTQ students.
The recommendation made in the letter is that the regulation be changed to state that “students must be housed in accordance with their gender identification and explain that purposeful misgendering is a form of harassment.”
Additionally, the senators encouraged the Education Department to proceed with a regulation mandating that transgender kids be permitted to participate on teams “consistent with their gender identification” by athletic organisations.
According to the letter, “protecting transgender students’ rights to engage in sports activities consistent with their gender identification in no way disadvantaged their fellow students, and does not take away or weaken the safeguards Title IX affords for women and girls.”
While calling for more enforcement, the letter also applauded the government for including abortion as a protected category.
The letter continued, “We request the Department provide further instructions on how schools should protect students’ privacy and records documenting students’ pregnancy status in light of the changing landscape of abortion rights and efforts to harass, discriminate against, and intimidate students who exercise their reproductive rights.
Since it was proposed in June, Biden’s Title IX regulation has drawn criticism from affected religious organisations and worried parents.
Advocates for religious liberty and free expression fear that the envisioned rule modification might be used to impose rules about employment, toilet use, preferred pronoun use, and clothing regulations.
The opportunity for residents to provide comments on the regulation before it entered the finalisation process was over on Monday.
There were hundreds of thousands of comments from worried parents, which is a record amount.
According to a commentator, “[a] girl’s privacy, safety, and equal opportunity are violated” when males are permitted to attend girls’ locker rooms, showers, and sporting events on the basis of the ambiguous idea of “gender identity.”
Another parent said, “If this affects my children’s education, we will file a lawsuit.”