Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

SHERI FEW: States Should Defy Biden Admin’s Title IX Rules

President Joe Biden at a 2023 Pride Month celebration at the White House. (Screen Capture/KTLA 5)

More than half of the country’s states have sued the Biden administration— as have governors, state education chiefs and even local schools — over their new rules governing Title IX enforcement.

Many have made public statements refusing compliance with the twisted ideological agenda being forced on America’s schools and universities by Biden’s Title IX regulations.

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 new rules were signed by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

President Biden’s Executive Orders 13988 and 14021 directed the development of two sets of menacing Title IX rules, which bear the theme of preventing harm to students by not honoring their “gender identity.”

States should refuse to comply. The risk for noncompliance is losing federal education funds. But it is not as risky as one might think. Most Americans are shocked to learn that government schools only gain an average of about 8% of their education funding from federal sources.

Among other things, these ridiculous regulations expand the definition of sex-based discrimination to include “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.”

The new rules strip away due process rights from students accused of sexual misconduct. Their definition of “harassment” could easily lead to criminal penalties for using the “wrong” pronouns for people identifying with the opposite sex.

While they don’t include the March 2024 proposal that specifically addresses sports, the new rules that go into effect on August 1 prohibit schools from barring transgender students from using women’s bathrooms or locker rooms.

Constitutionally, education policy belongs to states and, moreover, to parents and local communities, not the federal government. But on the off-chance states do lose federal education funding, U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) has published a Blueprint on how to handle that.

The second step in the Blueprint, which is being implemented in South Carolina, is to conduct a cost of compliance study identifying how much it costs a state to comply with federal regulations. I believe South Carolina will find that it costs close to 50% of the federal revenue it receives to comply with its mandates. This will significantly lower the actual value of federal funds in a state’s education budget and states will begin to realize it is not worth the small percentage of funding to cede control of classrooms to the federal government.

Congress enacted Title IX 50 years ago to protect women and girls from sex-based discrimination, not to facilitate an invasion of their locker rooms and restrooms by biological males. The new rules not only undermine Congress’s intent but also violate the “separation of powers” doctrine laid out in the U.S. Constitution.

The 1952 Supreme Court case Youngstown et. al. v. Sawyer, held that the president may not, by issuing an executive order, usurp the lawmaking powers of Congress.

I encourage states to call Biden’s bluff. There is no precedent for the federal government to make good on its threat to withhold funding.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California, he refused to comply with federal testing mandates and the Bush administration threatened to withhold federal education funding but later learned it could only withhold a portion of the administrative funding. The U.S. Department of Education announced it would withhold $1 million in Title I administrative funds as a fine that was later reduced, and California only ended up paying $50,000 — mere peanuts in the scheme of California education funding.

Most egregiously, Biden’s new Title IX rules codify a lie defying scientific fact. Not to mention the hostile affront to our country’s Judeo-Christian values.

It’s time to end the federal hammerlock over education.

By resisting Biden’s Title IX rules, and rejecting federal funds, states can break free from the left’s control of the government school system.

Sheri Few is the Founder and President of United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) whose mission is to end the U.S. Department of Education and all federal education mandates. Few has written extensively about critical race theory and served as executive producer for the documentary film titled “Truth & Lies in American Education.”

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Featured image credit: (Screen Capture/KTLA 5)