McClain, Foxx Launch Probe into Title IX Rule Changes

WASHINGTON—Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) and Committee on Education and the Workforce Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). are today launching an investigation into the Department of Education’s decision to alter its Title IX regulations. The lawmakers are seeking information to determine whether any external organizations played an outsized role in the development of the proposed regulations. In a letter to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, the lawmakers request documents and communications related to the Department’s interactions with external organizations related to the enforcement, administration, or interpretation of Title IX on the basis of “gender identity.”

“The Committees on Oversight and Accountability and Education and the Workforce are investigating the Department of Education’s (the Department) decision to drastically revamp its Title IX regulations. The Committees are concerned that your efforts to gut due process protections for accused and accusing students, redefine ‘sex discrimination’ to include ‘gender identity,’ and otherwise abandon established regulations protecting women and girls are improperly motivated and destructive to American students. […] Rather than providing clarity, the proposed regulations weaken essential protections for students that had been secured by Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration.” the lawmakers wrote.

In May 2020, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued regulations that reshaped the Department’s Title IX regulations and ensured both the accused and complainants were afforded due process protections. The Department’s rule changes will do away with the safeguards that ensured procedural fairness for all students.

“Moreover, the proposed Title IX regulations contain a troubling provision that will harm women and girls across the country.  Your Department’s proposed regulations redefine ‘sex discrimination’ to include ‘discrimination on the basis of gender identity.’  By redefining ‘sex discrimination’ to include ‘gender identity,’ the proposed regulations, along with additional proposed regulations addressing athletics, will effectively wipe out female-only sports and spaces in every federally funded school. Sex discrimination that includes discrimination on the basis of ‘gender identity’ will virtually ensure that young women will ‘lose out on opportunities, scholarships, and even their basic rights to privacy and safety,” the lawmakers continued.

Read the letter to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona here.