Submitted by AG Rokita’s Press Office
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita is suing the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) over what he says is an assault on the rights of girls and women via a rewrite of Title IX rule.
Rokita
“The new rule allows biological men to invade the private spaces of girls and women – such as bathrooms and locker rooms – as part of the Biden administration’s hellbent determination to advance the extreme ideology of the far-left transgender movement,” Rokita said. “We cannot effectively protect women’s rights – or even their physical safety – if we refuse to acknowledge there are in fact two sexes, male and female – and ONLY two sexes. We cannot function effectively as a republic if we deny the basic facts of creation.”
The six-state lawsuit is being spearheaded alongside Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia.
Enacted in 1972, Title IX helped equalize women’s access to educational facilities and programs by barring discrimination based on sex by federally funded schools. At the same time, because of the enduring physical differences between men and women, Title IX has always allowed the sex-segregated spaces – like bathrooms and locker rooms – that are ubiquitous across the nation.
Rokita says the new DOE rule, in the guise of confronting “gender identity discrimination,” essentially abolishes sex-based distinctions in educational activities and programs. “It forces Indiana and other states to accept radical gender ideology in our schools,” he said.
DOE has adopted the new rule in defiance of Congress’s repeated refusal to extend Title IX’s protections to anything other than sex.
Rokita says if DOE’s unauthorized rewrite of Title IX is allowed to stand, Indiana schools will have to allow males self-identifying as female – in every grade from preschool through college – to use girls’ and women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, play on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and access other female-only activities and spaces. Otherwise, schools risk losing billions in federal funding.
“Congress intended Title IX to prevent discrimination against girls and women,” AG Rokita said. “The point was to encourage increased participation by girls and women in middle school, high school and college athletics. Now leftists are trying to twist Title IX to codify the very kind of anti-woman prejudice and discrimination this law was originally intended to remedy. With this lawsuit, we intend to stop this travesty.”