Southern States Sue over Civil Rights Victory
LGBTQ+ students across America won a significant civil rights victory when the Department of Education published updates to the Title IX law earlier this month, but culture war conservatives are angrier than they’ve ever been.
by Alyssa Steinsiek
Despite popular belief that Joe Biden’s administration might punt promised changes to Title IX student protections to his theoretical next term, on April 19th Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and the Department of Education have issued updates to the civil rights law set to be enacted in August.
The updates to Title IX, which directly overturn many harsh changes made by Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, concern sexual misconduct and the rights of LGBTQ+ and pregnant or parenting students on school campuses that receive federal funding.
DeVos’ 2019 changes to Title IX provided more rights to those alleged to have perpetrated sexual assault or harassment, narrowed the definition of sexual misconduct, and gave schools free reign to implement their own policies for handling accusations of sexual misconduct. The changes were heavily criticized by survivors and others.
The new Title IX revisions provide, for the first time, explicit protection under law for LGBTQ+ students. Should those students, on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, be denied services or facilities, be subjected to a hostile school environment, or be targeted for harassment by other students or school faculty, they are guaranteed the right to a response from their school. Should they be dissatisfied with that response, they can now seek relief from the federal government.
This is an historic move by Biden’s Department of Education, though it is worth pointing out that the changes do not make mention of transgender students’ participation in sports. A rule proposed last year would prohibit blanket bans on transgender students in sports, but critics have pointed out that it would leave room for more specific bans from individual sports or teams.
The nearly 1,600 page document detailing the new Title IX changes said, of transgender students’ participation in athletics teams:
“[These changes do] not apply to permissible sex separation of athletic teams. ... The [rule proposed in April of 2023] said a categorical ban on transgender students playing sports consistent with their gender identity would not satisfy the proposed regulation, but more targeted criteria, substantially related to sport, level of competition, and grade or education level, could be permissible. The Department [of Education] is continuing to evaluate comments on that proposed regulation, and will issue its final rule on this standard for criteria for a student's eligibility to participate on sex-separate athletic teams in the future.”
Claiming that these changes to Title IX are “a radical departure from what Title IX was originally meant to do,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, alongside attorneys general from Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, have filed a federal lawsuit challenging just the second revision made to a law passed over fifty years ago.
“We will not comply, and we will fight back,” said radical anti-trans activist/Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who in recent years has outright banned participation in sports by transgender athletes in Florida, denied Florida teachers and students First Amendment rights, and started a war with Disney over his ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill which he would very much like to weasel his way out of now.
This aggressive litigatory response is no great shock, given the polarized politics surrounding transgender Americans, and indeed transgender people the world over. But it is an indication of just how high the stakes have become these last few years of culture war conservatives have waged against LGBTQ+ people.
Consider that the administration of President Barack Obama issued multiple guidelines regarding Title IX, including 2016 advisory that transgender students could not be barred from using the bathrooms that corresponded with their gender identity, and that “a student’s gender identity will be considered that student’s sex when it comes to enforcing federal law.”
You could be forgiven for glossing over or entirely missing this news at the time. Discrimination against transgender Americans was in its infancy then, with evangelist politicians and organizations only just beginning to pivot away from demonizing same-sex marriage in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges and set their sights on a new target. The second, much larger wave of anti-transgender activism and state discrimination wouldn’t begin in earnest for a few more years.
It’s hard to say whether or not this Confederacy of States suing over the new Title IX changes will see success, or whether our next conservative president might simply work to undo them, as the anti-education Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos did in 2019.
What is clear, however, is that the climate surrounding the rights of transgender Americans has drastically changed. Let’s hope that, sooner or later, it changes for the better again.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer and video games nerd who cohosts a podcast about trans news!
