Your teenage daughter is training seven days a week, going for that college scholarship. She’s worked her whole life to excel, only to come up short thanks to a biological male who claims to identify as a girl. This nightmare could be yours, courtesy of President Joe Biden.
Every day, it seems the federal government is taking more and more control over the way we live our lives, driving up the cost of gas, making our money worth less, and forcing woke transgender ideology down our throats.
We often feel powerless to do anything about it, but the Biden administration is required by law to listen to the American people when it implements a major new rule or regulation.
Federal agencies open rules up for “notice and comment,” a process by which everyday citizens can weigh in on forthcoming rules and regulations. Agencies are required by law to read what you send in, and sometimes courts will cite these public comments, even if the government decides to go forward with the rule anyway.
Heritage Action for America, the grassroots advocacy arm of The Heritage Foundation, launched a portal this week that makes it easy for Americans to make their voices heard in opposition to a consequential new regulation forcing K-12 schools to allow males to compete in women’s sports. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Biden’s Department of Education proposed a new rule that would require schools to allow males who claim to identify as transgender to compete against girls in sports. This rule twists the plain meaning of Title IX on its head—removing the law’s protections for women in sports by redefining the word “sex” to include what it clearly did not mean in 1972, when Congress passed Title IX of the education amendments.
Title IX aims to prevent discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs that receive federal government funding. This critical law protected women’s sports programs, leveling the playing field for female collegiate athletes. It is supremely ironic that the Biden administration now is twisting this very rule beyond recognition—to disadvantage women and deprive them of opportunities for fair play and academic scholarships.
The Department of Education summarizes the new rule this way: “Under the proposed regulation, schools would not be permitted to adopt or apply a one-size-fits-all policy that categorically bans transgender students from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity.”
The rule provides some flexibility for schools to limit male participation in women’s sports, so long as they “serve important educational objectives, such as ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.”
Heritage Action, argues, however, that “this is a false standard that puts girls on defense, making them justify the existence of their own sports and places.” Young female athletes will have to fight with their schools and against the federal government for their own safety and equal educational opportunities.
By endorsing the claims of a nebulous gender identity over the biological markers of sex, this regulation would erode the very grounds on which schools could limit males—whose muscles and hearts tend to be larger than those of females, especially after testosterone-fueled puberty—from competing against girls and women.
The Department of Education needs to know that its transgender policy is not commonsense or moderate, as the rulemaking document suggests. Transgender ideology promotes identity over biology, and so long as it is the foundation on which this rule rests, it cannot support a level playing field in women’s sports.
Take swimmer Lia Thomas, for example. In his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, Thomas competed on the men’s swim team, recording the sixth-fastest national men’s time in the 1,000-yard freestyle and within the top 100 in the 500-yard and 1,650-yard freestyle races. Yet after Thomas joined the women’s team, he racked up record times at the Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships in February 2022, in the 100-yard, 200-yard, and 500-yard freestyle races.
Riley Gaines, a woman who is a 12-time All-American and three-time Southeastern Conference champion, tied with Thomas in the 200 freestyle at the NCAA Division I Women’s Championships last year, yet only one person received the trophy—the male swimmer.
Gaines told The Daily Signal’s Virginia Allen that the NCAA official told her, “Well, for photo purposes, Lia has to have it. You can pose with this one, but you go home empty-handed. Thomas takes the trophy.”
Males claiming to identify as women have finished first in women’s sports such as track, volleyball, weight lifting, cycling, and swimming, along with other sports.
Duke Law School professor Doriane Lambelet Coleman warned that if women’s sports must admit biological men, “the very best women in the world would lose to literally thousands of boys and men, including thousands who would be considered second-tier.”
Parents, grandparents, teachers, girls, boys, and all Americans who value fair play must make their voices heard in opposition to this rule—not because they harbor any animus toward people who identify with the gender opposite their biological sex, but because they want to make sure that girls and women do not lose vital opportunities because some guy uses a dress to steal their trophies.
You can voice your opposition to this regulation and send the Biden administration a message through the portal here.
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