GOP Senators Demand Answers from Education Secretary About Protecting Female Students’ Privacy and Safety Under Proposed ‘Gender Identity’ Rule

U.S. Senators sent Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona a letter last week criticizing the federal government’s effort to add “gender identity” as a protected category under Title IX of the federal code, a law passed to provide equal opportunities to women.

Does anyone in the Biden administration truly believe that allowing generally taller, larger, faster boys and men to compete against girls and women provide these girls and women an equal opportunity? They will not win. And when female athletes change their clothes to don their uniforms for these teams, they expect to do so in the privacy of their own changing rooms, with other girls and women, not boys and men pretending.

Allowing boys and men to do this violates the privacy of girls and women, undermines their safety and sense of modesty, and robs them of fairness in sports competitions.

Senators Tom Cotton, Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley signed the letter, but Senators Mike Lee and Marco Rubio also support it. The lawmakers wrote that “your department has suggested that schools which prohibit males from using women’s bathrooms or playing women’s sports could be guilty of unlawful ‘discrimination.’…Your interpretation of Title IX will undermine that law’s very purpose by making schools and sports unsafe and unfair for women and girls.”

The senators wrote about the broader implications of changing the law to add “gender identity.”

“Equally disturbing is the likelihood that your department will weaponize Title IX to force a radical gender ideology in K-12 classrooms. A number of troubling incidents suggest how your interpretation of Title IX could erode women’s rights, free-speech rights, parental rights, and children’s safety and innocence. Given these concerns, please respond to the following questions by Monday, August 15, 2022.”

The lawmakers asked whether students or teachers refusing to refer to a male as “she” or “her” or an opposite-sex name constitutes a potential violation of a re-interpreted Title IX.

Florida passed a law to protect K-3 children from inappropriate classroom instruction, and Cardona implied that the measure violates Title IX.

“Would it be ‘discriminatory’ or a potential violation of Title IX for a school, district, or state to limit a school employee’s ability to discuss ‘gender identity’ with young children? Would it be a potential violation of Title IX for any school, district, or state to discipline a teacher’s or school employee’s discussion of the aforementioned topic with young children?”

The senators asked Cardona about a girl raped in Loudoun County in the girls’ restroom by a boy calling himself a girl.

“Would it be ‘discriminatory’ or a potential violation of Title IX to deny a boy who claimed a different ‘gender identity’ access to the girl’s bathroom?”

The senators include other such questions in the letter. They asked Cardona to reply by Monday, August 15.

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