President Biden may not want to remind voters about his administration’s hotly debated reworking of Title IX, but advocates for female sports have no intention of letting the matter drop.
The Our Sports, Our Bodies coalition launched its “Take Back Title IX” national bus tour Wednesday targeting the administration’s rulemaking adding “gender identity” to the landmark civil-rights law, which bars sex discrimination in education.
In case anyone missed the point, the bus tour kicked off at Lackawanna College in Scranton, Pennsylvania, also known as Mr. Biden’s hometown.
“Our Bodies, Our Sports believes that taking opportunities from women and giving them to men doesn’t enforce Title IX, it violates it,” said the coalition. “That was true before the Biden administration dropped its new Title IX rule, and it is still true today.”
At least 26 states and one school district have sued the Biden administration in the last month over the Title IX rewrite, which extends the law’s protections to biological males who identify as female in the interest of advancing “educational equity.”
“The new regulations strip away all sex-based protections in education, undermine women’s rights, and require schools to allow males to self-identify into women’s spaces, opportunities, and athletics,” said the coalition.
Mr. Biden was in Pennsylvania the same day campaigning with Vice President Kamala Harris at Girard College in Philadelphia, where they launched Black Voters for Biden-Harris.
The bus tour is scheduled to roll through a dozen states in May and June. On June 23, the 52nd anniversary of Title IX, the tour is slated to hold a press conference and rally near the White House to commemorate the law “before the Biden administration’s unlawful rewrite upends Title IX as we have always known it.”
The Department of Education has insisted the regulations don’t extend to scholastic sports, but critics disagree, saying there’s nothing to stop schools from applying the rules to athletics. The rewrite takes effect Aug. 1.
The department is working on a separate rulemaking on the issue of transgender eligibility in sports that is expected to be released after the November election.
Advocates for transgender athletes argue that “trans women are women” and should have access to girls’ and women’s facilities, accommodations and opportunities.
The coalition numbers a dozen women’s groups, including the Independent Women’s Forum, Concerned Women for America, Independent Council on Women’s Sports, and Women’s Liberation Front.
Speakers at the Scranton event included Riley Gaines and Paula Scanlan, both former Division I collegiate swimmers, as well as former Oberlin College women’s lacrosse coach Kim Russell; Idaho state Rep. Barbara Ehardt; Jennifer Sey, founder of XX-XY Athletics, and former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Also appearing were former high school athletes Payton McNabb and Selina Soule. Ms. McNabb was suffered head injuries after being spiked during a volleyball game by a male-to-female transgender player, while Ms. Soule is suing Connecticut after losing track races to male-born runners.
Tennis great Martina Navratilova, whose picture is one of those on the side of the bus, is also expected to put in an appearance at some point during the tour.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.