The Biden administration has again delayed the gender equity Title IX rule for school sports after intense grassroots opposition. This is a win for women’s sports and a win for those who have opposed allowing transgenders into women’s sports.
Critics had lashed out at the Biden administration after it unveiled its proposal for new Title IX rules to expand the meaning of sexual discrimination to include gender identity as it relates to the application for transgender athletes participating in women’s sports.
Under the Department of Education’s (DOE) proposed rule, no school or college that receives federal funding would be allowed to impose a “one-size-fits-all” policy that categorically bans transgender students from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Such policies would be considered a violation of Title IX.
Originally, the DOE desired to implement the new rule in May of this year, but delayed that to October 2023 due to the overwhelming response (>150,000 comments). Now most observers believe that the rule will not go forward until some time next year, probably in the summer.
This is a blow to the Biden administration who have made gender identity policies a big initiative. The administration wants to force schools to allow people with a mental illness (transgenderism) and perverts into the safe spaces of our mothers, wives and daughters.
This delay means that, at least, for this school year, female athletes are spared the meddling of the federal government in their sports.
Will the administration want to push this on people next year which is an election year?
The University of Pittsburgh rescinded an “unconstitutional” security fee charged to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) after the group cosponsored a campus talk on transgenderism with the College Republicans featuring Michael Knowles. The talk inspired considerable opposition and resulted in the indictment of a couple who allegedly targeted police with explosives.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) challenged the fee in a June 5 letter.
I guess somebody learned something from the Oberlin College fiasco a few years back.
The mayor of Newburyport, Massachusetts, decided he didn’t like the message being offered in his community by a parental rights organization. That group, Citizens for Responsible Education, had concerns regarding public school indoctrination and certain troubling instruction happening locally.
When the parents posted flyers advertising their meeting, Mayor Reardon ripped them down. Now the resolution to that action has resulted in a significant victory for free speech, according to a report from the American Center for Law and Justice.
“In addition to receiving a monetary payment to cover the damages CRE suffered, Newburyport’s Mayor Reardon agreed to issue a public statement acknowledging that his actions in ‘remov[ing] flyers from bulletin boards’ … should have better promoted the constitutionally protected free speech rights of CRE and, in the future, postings may not be censored based on their content or the viewpoints expressed,” the ACLJ reported.
A win like this in the deep blue state of Massachusetts will echo across the country.
The State of Georgia won a significant victory in US District Court when Judge Boulee refused to grant a preliminary injunction against most of the provisions of Georgia’s 2021 election reform law.
One of the reforms implemented by Georgia was a ban on ballot trafficking. That obviously prevents third-party strangers, such as candidates, party activists, political consultants, and others with a stake in the outcome of the election from handling ballots, which can lead to all kinds of mischief.
Georgia also legalized drop boxes for the first time, but specified, for obvious security reasons, that they be placed inside—rather than outside—voting locations so that election officials could keep a watchful eye on them the same way they do standard ballot boxes inside polling places.
Plaintiffs’ claimed that both of these commonsense rules violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 by discriminating against disabled voters. The judge wasn’t buying this nonsense.
Boulee did not disturb the Georgia requirement that a voter include his name, registration address, and the number of his Georgia driver’s license or free voter ID card or the last four digits of his Social Security number. Liberal groups have been up in arms over this new requirement to provide such an ID number. These groups are always opposed to an ID requirement because it makes it more difficult to commit fraud in the voting process.
Clearly a win for improving the integrity of elections in Georgia. When will blue states enact such commonsense improvements?