Wyoming is taking the Biden administration to court over new Title IX rules intended to strengthen protections for LGBTQ+ students. Gov. Mark Gordon touted Wyoming’s involvement in the suit, though his own views on transgender athlete participation have varied in the past.
In April, the Education Department announced sweeping changes to the federal civil rights law enacted in 1972 to combat sex discrimination in federally funded schools and education programs.
The new rules expand Title IX to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time in the law’s 50-year history.
Such changes, however, only seek to “politicize our country’s education system to conform to the radical ideological views of the Biden administration and its allies,” according to the 1,085-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas.
Gov. Mark Gordon and Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder applauded the suit Tuesday in a joint press release.
“In Wyoming, we protect our girls,” Degenfelder said. “We will never allow outrageous political agendas to get in the way of that. Not in bathrooms, not in education, not in sports. Period.”
Gordon, meanwhile, called it “yet another instance of federal overreach, seeking to impose a new interpretation on a longstanding law.”
In his second term, Gordon has had to wrestle with his stance on the rights of transgender youth. It has not been a cut-and-dry issue for the governor.
In March, he signed a bill to ban most gender-affirming medical care for children, but cautioned that the state was “straying into the personal affairs of families.”
A year earlier, he wrote a strongly worded letter criticizing a bill to prohibit transgender girls from competing in middle and high school sports, but also allowed it to become law without his signature.
“We must recognize this topic does not lend itself to a facile solution,” Gordon wrote in the 2023 letter, which called the ban “overly draconian” and “discriminatory.”
“There are victims on both sides of any action,” Gordon wrote.
Asked about his various statements on the issue last November, the governor’s office sought to make a “distinction between highly competitive college athletics, and K-12 sports in Wyoming,” where Gordon “believes in the benefits of participation in athletics for all students, including transgender individuals,” when he signed onto a letter asking the NCAA to change its transgender-athlete policy.
That distinction is missing from Tuesday’s federal lawsuit, which seeks to altogether block the new rules that could prevent federally funded schools — whether K-12 or collegiate — from barring transgender students from using restrooms, locker rooms and pronouns that match their gender identity.
A spokesperson for Gordon referred WyoFile to the governor’s press release when asked whether the recent lawsuit departs from this previous distinction.
Wyoming is joined in the suit by three other Republican-led states — Alaska, Kansas and Utah — as well as Moms for Liberty, and two other private, political organizations.
At least 15 other Republican-led states have also filed federal lawsuits challenging the new Title IX regulations for adding transgender protections, while several other red states have also vowed to outright ignore the new rules, imperiling almost $13 billion in federal aid for public universities, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Other details, opposition
The complaint argues that the new regulations roll back the rights of girls and women by expanding Title IX’s protections to include gender identity in its definition of sex discrimination.
It also argues that Title IX “was always explicit in its protections of biological females in educational programs and activities, including sports” and thereby the four-state coalition is suing “to defend their interest in the continued receipt of federal education funds.”
The suit identifies dozens of plaintiffs by their initials, including one from Park County, who competes on the junior varsity girls’ tennis team. It did not specify how “T.P.” would be harmed by the new rules, other than to say she plans to play on her school tennis team through high school.
The suit also names Kailee Verdeyen, a University of Wyoming freshman, as an example of a student who fears they will be disciplined for their views if the rules take effect.
“Verdeyen considers herself to be an ‘old school feminist’ and has deeply-held beliefs about women’s rights and supports Title IX’s intent to protect biological women,” according to the complaint. “While at the University of Wyoming, she has publicly expressed views consistent with these beliefs.”
If the rules take effect, the complaint states, Verdeyen “reasonably fears” she would face “investigatory and disciplinary proceedings for expressing views of this nature.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming, meanwhile, accused the state’s elected officials of using transgender youth “as a political punching bag.”
“Across the country and right here in Wyoming, political attacks against transgender people have grown exponentially over the last several years,” Libby Skarin, acting executive director for the ACLU of Wyoming, wrote in a press release.
“This lawsuit is little more than political grandstanding and just the latest attempt to erase transgender people from society. This intolerance against a marginalized group of people is a distraction from our state’s real needs and hurts us all.”
The new rules are set to go into effect Aug. 1.
Easy solution to current problem here. Simply cut all sports in schools/colleges period. It would save taxpayers lot of money.
It amazes me that a segment of our society that call themselves the “Freedom People” work so hard to take personal freedoms away from others. Yes it IS a complex problem. Personal rights have been a problem through the ages. It was the problem our Constitution was created to address. Many would like to take us back to authoritarianism, they seem to want a king back as long as that king thinks the same way they do. What if the King does not see things the same way they do? Then what?
A man has the personal freedom to call himself a woman and imitate a woman’s fashion and mannerisms when he is really a man, but his personal freedom ends when he decides to enter a woman’s sporting event, undress in a woman’s locker room, or decides that he deserves to be allowed to live in a battered women’s shelter or women’s prison. Yesterday, May 18th in Oregon, a sophomore boy who calls himself a girl won the 200m girls’ state championship and placed 2nd in the 400m. The two 2nd place girls that he beat in the regionals in those events did not get to go to State. Last year, a man who calls himself a woman won the 1st place prize money in the women’s event of the 2023 Tour of the Gila cycling race. A man who calls himself a woman destroyed the women’s powerlifting records in Canada last year. Clothes, makeup, hairstyle, name, drugs and surgery cannot change DNA. http://www.hecheated.org
What a bunch of ignorance from folks that should know better. Do you realize how many sexual variations there are? It is not male or female, but at least 20 plus variations. If you are religious, then marginalizing trans is insulting your maker who created them.
If you are not, then you are ignoring the scientific research that has been done on sexuality.
Title IX is unconstitutional in the first place.
Rather than bicker with the federal government over this and similar enforcement or non-enforcement issues, our Republic and our citizens would be best served if Republicans and the Communist-Democrats could work together to repeal federal over-reach such as Title IX, EEO, Fair Housing Act, etc. To make this happen, states must direct their congressional delegations to restore the powers reserved for the states under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Who plays which sports should never been made into a federal issue. Who you can sell your house to should never have been made a federal issue. Who you hire or fire, also should never have been made a federal issue. At this point, the mere size and scope of the federal government threatens to destroy liberty and our Republic.
It’s not complicated at all. Men/boys don’t belong in girls/women sports. Regardless of what they claim to be they still bigger faster stronger then girls/women. They don’t belong there. It that simple. Women/girls can end all this madness. Simply step back don’t run that race/swim against/take part in that competition. It soon ends