Republicans hope to block the Biden administration’s Title IX revisions and revert them back to the restrictive Trump-era Title IX guidelines.
“While House Republicans are spending their time this week fighting for the freedom for refrigerators and dignity for dishwashers, we House Democrats are here to stand up for Americans’ fundamental rights and call attention to yet another devastating, hateful attack on women.”
—Rep. Kathy Manning (D-N.C.)
On April 19, the Biden administration released long-awaited new Title IX guidelines that increase protections for assault victims, LGBTQ+ students and pregnant students by providing schools more flexibility in how they conduct investigations. The revisions expand the definition of sexual assault and propose that students be covered by the ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County which held that gay and transgender workers are protected from workplace discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Almost three months later, on July 10, House Republicans passed a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution—House Joint Resolution 165—that would block the Biden administration’s Title IX revisions and revert them back to the restrictive Trump-era Title IX guidelines.
Under its Title IX rule, the Trump administration refused to protect transgender students under federal law and strengthened the rights of students accused of sexual harassment. As Georgetown University lecturer Sara Collins argued, the revisions to sexual harassment investigations made it “more difficult to hold schools themselves accountable for creating and maintaining an educational environment free of sexual harassment and assault.”
As a result of the recent CRA, the House Democratic Women’s Caucus (DWC) and the Equality Caucus held a press call to condemn the actions of House Republicans and highlight the importance of Biden’s Title IX expansions.
The DWC is composed of all the Democratic women in the House of Representatives, and seeks to “to deliver for women” across the nation and the world. The Equality Caucus, established by nine openly LGBTQ+ members of the House of Representatives in 2008, acts as a resource for Members of Congress on federal LGBTQ+ issues. The press call featured DWC vice chair Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.), DWC policy co-chair Rep. Manning and Equality Caucus vice chair Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.).
On Aug. 1, Biden’s Title IX rules—which increase protections for assault victims, LGBTQ+ students, and pregnant students—are set to go into effect. If the CRA passes in the Senate, the Biden administration’s protections will be blocked, causing a return to Trump’s Title IX rule. However, the CRA is unlikely to pass in the Senate, where the Democrats have a majority. With the election just around the corner, though, Biden’s Title IX rule may still be in jeopardy.
According to Reps. Fernández and Manning, a return to the Trump administration’s Title IX rule would cause women, students and members of the LGBTQ+ community to be re-traumatized every time they sought to file a complaint under Title IX.
Trump’s revisions to Title IX were devastating. As Rep. Manning noted, “under Trump’s Title IX rule, survivors were forced to suffer in fear and students who were experiencing discrimination on campus felt they had no place to go.”
She went on to recount the story of one student in particular, Latasha (pseudonym):
“Latasha was a freshman at a mid-sized university. She was sexually assaulted by another student in 2021. She reported her incident to her university’s Title IX office, and upon going through the Title IX process, she had to experience excruciating victim blaming and disbelief by the Title online coordinator, this process felt adversarial, retraumatizing, it felt like an attack on her character and her credibility. And the experience deterred her from fully sharing her story. She ultimately decided to stop participating in the process”
Students like Latasha are not the only ones affected by the House Republicans’ move to block Title IX expansions. In the words of Rep. Fernández, “What they are doing tells us who they are and what they intend to do with respect to women.”
Ironically, members of the Republican party have tried to position themselves as the protectors of women’s rights and Title IX. A press release put forth by the Independent Women’s Forum, a right-wing organization, argues that the Biden administration’s Title IX revisions undermine women by allowing “males to self-identify into women’s spaces, opportunities, and athletics” (notably, the new Title IX guidelines do not extend to single-sex sports teams).
However, the move by House Republicans to roll back protections for sexual assault victims and pregnant students demonstrates that instead of seeking to protect women, the Republican party is working to dismantle Title IX in an effort to fundamentally restrict women’s rights.
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