Despite legal hurdles from the Supreme Court and mounting grassroots resistance among voters, the Biden-Harris administration continues to seek to enforce its sweeping new Title IX rule changes. As legal proceedings surrounding the rule changes continue, there could be no better time to explore how—and why—Title IX became a cultural lighting rod in American politics.
The regulatory overhaul to the 1972 law, first announced by the Biden Department of Education in April, allows men who claim transgender status to enter women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, receive women’s scholarships, and live in women’s dorm rooms. It has been the subject of widespread controversy and is widely perceived as being among the most radical transformations of the education system in American history.
While Title IX has generated some controversy throughout its history, it was originally enacted as a well-meaning set of rules to prohibit federally funded institutions from discriminating against students and employees on the basis of sex. The law is perhaps best known for requiring colleges and universities that accept public funding to offer an equal number of men’s and women’s sports.
Title IX also addresses issues of sexual harassment and violence in educational settings. Schools are required to take immediate and effective action to address and prevent sexual harassment and violence. This includes having procedures in place for handling complaints and ensuring the safety of students.
While Title IX was originally a bipartisan project – it was introduced by Democrat Representative Patsy Tink and signed into law by Republican President Richard Nixon – Democrats have in recent years turned it into a partisan issue. The Obama administration’s broad interpretation of Title IX laws, which was largely based on legal precedent established by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in the preceding years, weakened the evidentiary standard for sexual assault and unnecessarily expanded the definition of “sexual harassment.”
In April 2011, nearly halfway through Obama’s presidency, Russlynn Ali—the former Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights for the Department of Education—infamously distributed a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter outlining steps to address sexual violence on college campuses. Ali advised college administrators to determine guilt by “preponderance of evidence” rather than the “clear and convincing” standard, which was more commonly used in cases concerning sexual violence.
The letter also applied a far-reaching definition of sexual harassment defined by “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” which included “unwelcome sexual advances […] and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”
Notably, because terms like “sexual advances” and “sexual nature” were left undefined in the letter, innocent verbal remarks, jokes, and other casual comments could have fallen under the Obama definition of “sexual harassment.”
As conservatives were quick to note following Ali’s ‘Dear Colleage’ letter, guidelines as dangerously vague and legally imprecise as the Obama era Title IX rules are unfair to accused students and ultimately paved the way for a sprawling new Title IX apparatus that infringed upon students’ due process rights. The changes dramatically reduced the ability of individuals accused of sexual harassment and assault to defend themselves – effectively denying them the Constitution’s guarantee of due process.
Since the Obama years, college administrators have been broadly expected to conform their Title IX policies to the demands of the left-wing campus activist class, which stands in sharp contrast to the case-based, individual-based method enforced by the executive branch beforehand.
Unsurprisingly, the number of sex-related complaints on college campuses during the Obama administration was nearly six times greater than that of the Bush administration, and civil rights complaints received by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights increased by an annual rate of over 10,000 in a span of only 10 years (in 2022, it received the highest number of complaints on record).
Consequently, colleges and universities began to employ disproportionately high numbers of Title IX coordinators. The expanded definition of sexual harassment—along with the largely unreliable “preponderance of evidence” standard and the upsurge in Title IX bureaucrats—has made college campuses deeply inhospitable environments for students falsely accused of sexual misconduct.
Though the Trump administration rolled back the Obama rules, unfortunately for college students, the new Biden-Harris rules will only worsen the already dangerous dynamic the Obama administration started.
In addition, along with allowing men who claim to be “transgender” to enter women’s spaces, take women’s scholarships, and live alongside women in college dorms, the new rules will also compel students and faculty to use the “preferred pronouns” of “transgender”-identifying individuals—a major infringement upon students’ First Amendment rights.
Taken together, the Biden-Harris Title IX regulations prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity,” erasing any legal distinction between biological men and women, and empower individuals who claim “transgender” status to sue anyone for harassment if they dare to dissent. The accused are then denied the basic right to defend themselves and are subject to unilateral judgement from invariably left-wing school administrators.
If the Biden-Harris administration’s attempts to avert legal challenges and enforce their far-left rules nationwide are ultimately successful—as will likely be determined in the coming months—the college campus will be even farther away from being America’s epicenter of freedom, inquiry, and personal growth, as it once was. Instead, campuses will devolve into left-wing police states governed by Kamala Harris and legions of progressive bureaucrats.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
