The House of Representatives voted 218-206 on Tuesday to amend Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions, and ban transgender girls and women from girls’ sports in federally funded schools. did. The bill is the first federal anti-trans legislation to come up for a vote in the newly Republican-controlled Congress, and is a major threat to Democrats from the wave of anti-trans legislation expected under President-elect Donald Trump. This will be the first test of whether or not to fight back.
If passed, the bill would change Title IX and revoke federal funding for schools that allow transgender girls and women who align with their gender identity to participate on sports teams. The new rules will not only affect colleges and universities, but also public K-12 schools. The bill was introduced by Representative Greg Steube of Florida, who previously attempted to pass the House and reintroduced it to the Senate along with an identical bill by Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
This bill would change the actual provisions of Title IX to explicitly exclude transgender people from federal civil rights law. This is a major setback for LGBTQ+ rights, leaving transgender and non-binary students more exposed to discrimination and fewer tools to fight it. Notably, the impact of this law would be even greater than the recent judicial decision in Kentucky to roll back Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students nationwide.
Two House Democrats voted in favor of the bill, which depicts transgender girls as men, while House Republicans voted along party lines. Three Republicans and six Democrats abstained from voting. One House Democrat voted for “Gift.” The Senate version of the bill has not yet been scheduled for a vote, but it is expected to move quickly through the legislative process. Senate Democrats could filibuster the bill, derailing its progress or permanently blocking it, but in a political environment increasingly hostile to transgender rights, enough It’s unclear whether a number of lawmakers will commit to doing so.
Maha Ibrahim, the program managing attorney for Equal Rights Defenders, said the bill is far more dangerous than the Kentucky ruling. That’s because this bill would change the actual statute of Title IX. On the other hand, the judge’s ruling erases regulations enacted under the Biden administration. It hasn’t been in place long enough for students to understand the difference.
“When Congress gets away with things, that’s when we lose our rights,” she said. “This needs to be fought really hard.”
Ibrahim, who worked with other lawyers to prosecute the Trump administration’s Title IX rules in 2018 and 2020, said equal rights groups would fight the bill if it became law, possibly on constitutional grounds. He said he would file a complaint. Even if the bill were to become law, the state’s nondiscrimination protections would still affect the treatment of LGBTQ+ students, she said.
Biden’s Title IX regulations allow LGBTQ+ students to fight discrimination without filing a lawsuit. Alternatively, you can file a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which is less stressful and time-consuming. After last week’s ruling, that is no longer the case. However, Ibrahim said that advocates and legal experts are not relying on these regulations.
“We have been litigating for decades based solely on the law,” she said. This federal judge in Kentucky struck down the Biden administration’s effort to clarify how transgender students would be protected in schools, but not including transgender students in the Gender Equality Act. I didn’t touch it. “That’s just the power of Congress,” she said.
This bill in Congress would have that effect. Seth Chandler, a constitutional law professor at the University of Houston Law Center, said that through this bill, Congress is trying to define what constitutes sex discrimination based on traditional gender norms. He believes there are no major ambiguities in the bill and the only way to overturn it would be to challenge the Constitution, which would be a difficult undertaking.
The ban also requires the Government Accountability Office to conduct an investigation into the negative psychological or developmental effects that cisgender girls experience from playing sports alongside transgender girls.
Research shows that trans women who undergo testosterone suppression through gender-affirming care have no clear biological advantage over cis women in elite sports. Trans athletes point out that just like cisgender people, there are differences in athletic performance among transgender people. The NCAA, the nation’s largest governing body for college sports, is asking the national governing bodies of each sport to establish rules for transgender student-athletes.
Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., on Tuesday called the bill “a federal takeover of sports at every level.” Trahan, a former Division I college athlete and mother of two girls, said on the House floor that the Republican approach to the issue would have devastating consequences. She mentioned what the enforcement of such a law would be like.
“Girls as young as 4 years old are subjected to invasive interrogations about their bodies, and even physical searches by unknown adults, or predators, all because some unscrupulous people “Is it to criticize her for not being a girl?” she said.
House Republicans sidestepped Democratic questions about how the bill would be implemented. Congressman Mark Takano, chairman of the Congressional Equality Caucus, and other Democratic lawmakers described the bill as the “Child Predator Empowerment Act,” which would accelerate the national crisis of sexual assault against women and girls. , said it would cause a national crisis. A goal on the back of every young woman who plays sports in school.
Speaking on the House floor before Tuesday’s vote, Steube slammed the entire concept of transgender identity, saying terms like “non-binary,” “trans man” and “trans woman” were coined. However, transgender and gender diverse people have existed in many different cultures throughout history.
