Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said on Monday his state will not abide by the Biden administration’s sweeping new changes to Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination at government-funded schools.
In a letter to President Biden, Abbott railed against the revised rules – which provide new protections for transgender students – saying they’re “illegal” and the result of a “ham-handed effort to impose a leftist belief onto Title IX,” which, Abbott said “exceeds your authority as President.”
“You have rewritten Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they are girls and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity,” Abbott wrote in his letter, arguing that step exceeds Biden’s authority.
Abbott’s criticism comes as a growing number of Republican-led states have pledged to reject the Title IX rules finalized this month by the Education Department.
Top education officials in Florida, Louisiana, Wyoming, South Carolina and Oklahoma have publicly rebuked the Biden administration’s new Title IX, arguing the new policies roll back the rights of women and girls by expanding the landmark civil rights law’s definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity.
Abbott said in his letter he will instruct his state government not to adhere to the new policies, citing concerns that they conflict with Texas state law.
“I am instructing the Texas Education Agency to ignore your illegal dictate,” Abbott continued. “Your rewrite of Title IX not only exceeds your constitutional authority, it also tramples laws that I signed to protect the integrity of women’s sports by prohibiting men from competing against female athletes. Texas will fight to protect those laws and to deny your abuse of authority.”
Laws passed in more than a dozen Republican-led states prevent transgender students from using school restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity or allow teachers and students to disregard a trans person’s name and pronouns. Adhering to such laws may violate the new Title IX regulations, a senior administration official told The Hill, if doing so creates a hostile environment.
In Texas, Abbott signed two laws aimed at prohibiting transgender women from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity, in public schools and in universities. The Education Department unveiled a proposal last April governing athletics eligibility that would prohibit schools from adopting policies like the ones in Texas, but the Biden administration has yet to finalize the rule.
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