White House unsure if men in women’s sports is ‘fair’
In a testy exchange during a press briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to provide a definitive answer when asked by a reporter whether the Biden administration believes it’s “fair” for men who identify as women to compete in female sports, adding that “it is complicated.”
A reporter asked Ms. Jean-Pierre during an Aug. 29 White House press briefing whether President Joe Biden cares whether “girls are allowed to compete in sports without fear of injury” or if he believes it’s “fair for girls to have to compete against biological males.”
Ms. Jean-Pierre replied by saying that the issue is “complicated” and defies a simple yes or no answer.
“It is truly a complicated issue with a wide range of views,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said. “There is no yes or no answer to this. It is complicated.”
The press secretary then provided some context, namely that there’s a proposal of rulemaking put forward by the Department of Education (DOE) that is currently being considered that targets the issue of biological males playing in female sports.
“There’s a rule that the Department of Education has put forward, and we’re going to let that process move forward,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.
“Again, we want to make sure that while we establish guardrails with this rule, that we also prevent discrimination as well against transgender kids,” she said. “But again, a complicated issue with a wide range of views, and we respect that.”
Title IX Modification Proposal
Ms. Jean-Pierre’s remarks about the DOE rule refers to a proposal to amend the department’s regulations that implement Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which seeks to expand protections at federally-funded schools against sex discrimination to include “discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
In particular, the regulation seeks to explicitly prohibit policies or actions that prevent a person from taking part in an “education program or activity consistent with their gender identity,” meaning that it would open the door to males competing in female sports.
When announcing the proposed Title IX rule modification, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the changes are in accordance with President Joe Biden’s March 2021 executive order, which promised to guarantee an educational environment “free from discrimination based on sex, including sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Ms. Jean-Pierre said during the press conference that the proposed rule “gives schools the flexibility to establish their own athletic policies” and that it seeks to strike a balance between establishing guardrails to protect women it also seeks “to prevent discrimination against transgender kids.”
“That is something that is incredibly important, that the president wants to make sure that we also do that as well. So, I’m just not going to get ahead of that,” she added.
The public comment on the proposed Title IX modification lasts until October 2023, with the DOE saying in an update in May that it had received over 240,000 public comments.
“Carefully considering and reviewing these comments takes time, and is essential to ensuring the final rule is enduring,” the DOE said in the update.
Comments both in support and in opposition to the rule have been submitted.
Freedom of Speech Concerns
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an Arizona-based public interest law firm that submitted comments, said that expanding the definition of sex discrimination in education threatens free speech.
“Students who identify as transgender commonly request to be addressed by different names and pronouns,” ADF said in its comment.
“The use of pronouns inconsistent with a person’s sex communicates a message: that what makes a person a man or a woman is solely that person’s sense of being a man or a woman,” the group continued.
“Students who take a contrary view of the relationship between biological sex and personal identity (for religious, philosophical, scientific, or other reasons) may be reluctant to use those terms because using them contradicts their own deeply held views,” ADF said.
The group argued that the DOE’s proposed revisions would both restrict what people can say (such as addressing someone by pronouns consistent with their biological sex) and force them to speak certain utterances (such as referring to someone by the pronouns of their choice).
Fight Over Definition of ‘Sex’
The DOE’s proposed regulation marks the latest move in a long-running dispute over what exactly “sex” means in Title IX.
The Obama administration first tried to expand the definition, writing in an April 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter that Ti
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