Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) are pushing back on President Joe Biden's recent revision of Title IX, which includes safeguards for LGBTQ+ students.
Title IX is a civil rights law enacted in 1972 that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools or education programs that receive federal funding. Among the Title IX changes announced last week are new rules to clarify that Title IX also forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBTQ+ students who face discrimination will be entitled to a response from their school under Title IX, and those failed by their schools can seek recourse from the federal government.
Abbott, on Monday, tweeted on X that he sent a letter to the president condemning his recent revision of Title IX, saying it "forces schools to treat biological men as women." In his letter, Abbott said he instructed the Texas Education Agency to ignore the president's "illegal dictate" and that "Texas will not adhere to the new rules."
"Title IX was written by Congress to support the advancement of women academically and athletically," the governor wrote in his letter. "The law was based on the fundamental premise that there are only two sexes—male and female. You have rewritten Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they are girls and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity. This ham-handed effort to impose a leftist belief onto Title IX exceeds your authority as President. I am instructing the Texas Education Agency to ignore your illegal dictate."
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Absent from Biden’s policy, however, was any mention of transgender athletes. Still, the governor said the revision of Title IX exceeded Biden's constitutional authority and "it also tramples laws that I signed to protect the integrity of women’s sports by prohibiting men from competing against female athletes."
In 2023 Abbott signed the Save Women's Sports Act into law "to protect the integrity of fair competition and women's sports by prohibiting biological men from competing against female athletes at Texas colleges and universities." The governor's office said Abbott signed a similar law to protect girls' sports in Texas public schools in 2021.
The governor's directive is not the state's only action. The Office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he was suing the Biden Administration, accusing it of "unlawfully using Title IX to mandate radical gender ideology, violating [the] constitution and putting women at risk."
Paxton's office said the new requirements under Title IX expanded "the definition of 'sex' to include one’s self-professed 'gender identity'" and that it "contorts these protections for women by forcing schools to accommodate the wishes of men claiming to identify as women (or “transgender”) to enter female-only spaces and join female-only organizations."
Paxton said the change "would force schools to permit biological males to use female restrooms and lockers. If schools refused, federal funding would be withheld."
The state's attorney general said the modified rule violates existing federal law, ignores the Constitution, and denies women the protections it was intended to provide.
