This past week has been breathtaking in the swift evisceration of women’s sex-based rights. We have been thrust unwillingly into a new era of Endarkenment. From the very first day Joe Biden took office and promised to replace ‘sex’ in civil rights law with ‘gender identity’, WoLF has been on the ground fighting back. Today, we see the results of his promise: the erasure of 50 years of protection for women and girls in education on the basis of sex. 

Here’s what happened this week:

Tuesday April 16th: The US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit issued a ruling that a boy can compete on the girls' team.

West Virginia passed a state law in 2021 that bans male athletes purporting to be transgender from participating in female-only sports. The court ruled in the case of B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education that West Virginia’s law violates Title IX — a law passed in the 1970’s to protect female athletes from discrimination. The court said the boy can compete on the girls’ team.

Thursday April 18th: The girls protest.
Female athletes affected by this ruling refuse to participate in a multi-school meet.

Five members of the school’s middle-school girls’ track and field team, aged 11-13, who were directly impacted by the B. P. J. decision, bravely chose to protest during this week’s championship event. They refused to be forced to compete with the boy. He ended up winning that event. 

Friday April 19th: New Title IX Regulations drop, rewriting “sex” protections to include “gender identity.”

The new regulation includes “gender identity” as a part of “sex” and prioritizes the special gender feelings of boys and men over the safety, dignity, and educational opportunities of women and girls. Over 240,000 comments were submitted, a record for a proposed regulation change, and the vast majority opposed these changes. WoLF met with the Office of Management and Budget in March to express our concerns. The administration has canceled all further meetings. 

Breaking Down the New Title IX Regulation

The new regulations include 1,577 pages of intentionally ambiguous nonsense. Far from creating clarity, the new rules, effective August 1st, will cause additional mass confusion for schools. It’s already causing confusion in the media trying to report on it.

The administration is claiming the changes as a win, but left out a key provision: making it impossible for schools to ban trans-identifying males from women’s sports. Evidently, the administration was afraid of the growing backlash led by groups like WoLF against the total erasure of women’s sports. Yet, by replacing ‘sex’ with ‘gender identity’, they’ve successfully eviscerated protections for women’s spaces and sports in favor of trans supremacy. The summary document provided by the Dept. of Ed. specifically states that “policies and practices that prevent a student from participating in a recipient’s education program or activity consistent with their gender identity … generally violate Title IX’s nondiscrimination mandate.”

Women and girls deserved MUCH better than the garbage the Ed. Dept. delivered today. 

We deserved protection. We used to have it.

Threats to Freedom of Speech 

The new regulation not only fails to protect women’s sports but also poses major risks to freedom of speech by students, like the brave girls in West Virginia, who may wish to speak out against the males invading their spaces. Now, calling a man who declares he’s a woman a man would be considered “sexual harassment.” For example, in 2022, three eighth-grade students were charged with sexual harassment under Title IX for “mispronouning.” These cases will only become more common under the new rule.

A Silver Lining: Protections for Sexual Orientation

Despite the many horrible components of this regulation, we are glad to see increased protections on the basis of sexual orientation. However, the other aspects of this new rule are likely to disproportionately harm LBG students, as Gender Identity has consistently been vaulted over sexual orientation as a protected class — something WoLF has communicated extensively to the administration.

Next Steps

Our legal team will present an in-depth analysis of this new regulation and its impact on women’s sports. We’ll be joined by prominent women in the sporting world to talk over the impacts to women’s sports. We welcome you to join our Zoom panel discussion on Monday at 6pm ET! 

To the Department of Education, we have only one thing left to say:

See you in court! 

WoLF is the only feminist 501(c)(3) nonprofit fighting for women and girls in the courts and legislatures.

When you support WoLF, you champion our radical feminist mission to restore, protect, and advance the sex-based rights of women and girls using legal argument, policy advocacy, and public education!