Rolling back gender ideology must be a priority for the new Congress
President-elect Donald Trump won overwhelmingly this month, flipping several states and making huge inroads with diverse constituencies. Exit polls and postelection interviews point to one issue in particular that may have driven voters to back Trump: the enforcement of radical gender ideology in our schools, military, and other institutions.
The Biden administration used its political power to codify gender ideology across people’s day-to-day lives, including by amending Title IX in a way that would allow gender ideology to be a protected class in K-12 schools and colleges. Our organization, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, immediately organized a lawsuit to protect students from this unconstitutional rewrite, which would undermine Title IX’s original intent — to give girls equal opportunity in education and athletics.
More than that, by making gender ideology a protected class, the new federal Title IX rule could be used to punish students for using the wrong pronouns. In fact, we presented evidence from complainants that it has already inspired K-12 school administrators to hold schoolwide assemblies on gender ideology, during which school officials plainly told students that boys could be girls and girls could be boys.
What the Biden administration did to Title IX is a textbook case of unconstitutional overreach by the federal government to impose the newly constructed philosophy of “gender ideology” onto the entire country through the Education Department. Thankfully, the federal court agreed with our concerns and granted our case, State of Kansas vs. the U.S. Department of Education, a preliminary injunction to stop the new Title IX rules from taking effect in any K-12 school or college attended by the children of members of Moms for Liberty or Young America’s Foundation, our partners in the lawsuit.
Trump will have ample opportunity as well to push back against gender ideology at the federal level. On the campaign trail, he made it clear that he worried about children being sent to school and told they may be in the wrong body. He said he understood parents’ concerns that they would not even be consulted if their child told a teacher they had questions about their gender. And he publicly promised that if he returned to the White House, he would “direct the Department of Education to inform states and school districts that if any teacher or school official suggests to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body, they will be faced with severe consequences, including potential Civil Rights violations for sex discrimination, and the elimination of federal funding.”