Transgender Students & Title IX — Obama Administration Rewrites It

This morning the Department of Justice and Department of Education released a joint statement of extraordinary breadth and scope. Under the guise of offering “guidance,” the Obama administration put every single public and private educational institution receiving federal funds on notice that it intends to interpret and enforce Title IX — a statute, written in 1972, that by its explicit terms only prohibits sex discrimination — as also prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “gender identity, including discrimination based on a student’s transgender status.” If a boy claims he is a girl, then, according to the Obama administration, he is a girl and must be treated as such by the educational institution.

Given recent events in North Carolina, media have emphasized the letter’s treatment of bathroom access, but it casts a far broader net. At a stroke, the administration has attempted to impose its radical vision of human sexuality on every public-school student and employee in the country. The consequences are profound, and conservatives must vigorously resist.

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This morning the Department of Justice and Department of Education released a joint statement of extraordinary breadth and scope. Under the guise of offering “guidance,” the Obama administration put every single public and private educational institution receiving federal funds on notice that it intends to interpret and enforce Title IX — a statute, written in 1972, that by its explicit terms only prohibits sex discrimination — as also prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “gender identity, including discrimination based on a student’s transgender status.” If a boy claims he is a girl, then, according to the Obama administration, he is a girl and must be treated as such by the educational institution.

Given recent events in North Carolina, media have emphasized the letter’s treatment of bathroom access, but it casts a far broader net. At a stroke, the administration has attempted to impose its radical vision of human sexuality on every public-school student and employee in the country. The consequences are profound, and conservatives must vigorously resist.