In The Daily Wire comedy “LadyBallers” a group of male misfits breaks into women’s league basketball in an imaginary landscape that satirizes the type of changes inherent in recent Biden Administration revisions to Title IX./The Daily Wire promo photo
TOPEKA – Kansas Attorney General Kris kobach on Wednesday declared Kansas will join the side of numerous other red states in suing the Biden Administration over the president’s expansion of Title IX protections to include gender dysphoric men who say they are women, a move critics say in effect dissolves Title IX intended protections for women altogether.
Biden’s move replaces the context of “sex” with “gender identity,” effectively disavowing the distinction between men and women where practical application is concerned, which was the whole point of the 1972 legislative ruling that aimed to guarantee access for women to all aspects of higher education.
The original Title IX text was 37 words – the Biden Administration revision totals some 459,000 words. Public entities that don’t enforce those protections can lose various forms of federal funding.
“In the federal statute known as Title IX, male means biological male, and female means biological female,” Kobach said in a statement Tuesday. “Biden’s Department of Education has no authority to do what it is attempting to do.”
Read the text of the Kansas lawsuit here.
Kobach’s statement said under the Biden administration’s Title IX rule, a 16-year-old female on an overnight trip could be forced to share a hotel room with a biological male who identifies as a girl, or the district would lose federal funding. A 14-year-old girl could be forced to share a locker room and change in front of an 18-year-old biological male who “identifies” as a woman, or the district could lose funds.
“It’s insanity. Biden’s Title IX rule is unconscionable. It’s dangerous to girls and women, and it’s against federal law,” Kobach said. Attorneys general from three other states, including Alaska, Wyoming, and Utah, joined Kansas in the lawsuit.
Kobach said the new Title IX rule will also incentivize abortion and pose serious due process problems on college campuses related to sexual harassment accusations. The rule violates the First Amendment rights of teachers and school employees who have sincerely held religious beliefs that would prevent them from complying with the rule.
In announcing a separate lawsuit filed by the State of Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders charged Biden’s revision to the rule was “an attempt to erase women completely,” from those federal protections.
“I find myself asking,” Sanders said, “where are all the so-called feminists?”
In its response to Kobach’s lawsuit, the ACLU of Kansas took a different track in in rebuttal.
“Mr. Kobach either inherently misunderstands the intent and impact of Title IX protections or he purposely misinterprets them,” said ACLU Kansas Directory Micah Kubic. “Kobach is claiming he is standing up for girls and women. But what he is really doing is continuing his decades-long crusade against our shared values and fundamental rights, using his misleading legal interpretations to try to transform the law into a tool that persecutes Kansans instead of protecting them.”
