The summer hasn’t been kind to Joe Biden. Drowning in the lowest approval ratings in presidential history, a border crisis, internal fireworks over Israel, rumors about his mental decline, and a backfiring lawfare campaign against Donald Trump will make the latest legal slap-down sting that much more. In a blow to his pet LGBT agenda, a federal judge is blocking the White House’s radical rewrite of Title IX, set to take effect August 1.
Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, had strong words for the Biden administration in his ruling, insisting that this push to throw open girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, showers, and potentially sports teams to biological boys would “shockingly transform American education and usurp a major question from Congress.” In his blunt assessment, O’Connor scolded the president on basic civics: “That is not how our democratic system functions,” he wrote. This is, after all, “an immensely difficult policy issue,” he pointed out, and elected officials “must follow the proper legal procedures to initiate any desired change.”
The decision is a major setback for Biden, who hoped to have an extremely controversial back-to-school surprise for parents in the fall. By replacing girls’ rights with trans-identifying boys, the judge warned, the administration wasn’t “promot[ing] the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes.” Instead, it was doing “the exact opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX.”
For the overwhelming majority of Americans, the judge’s smackdown comes as a major relief. Already, the policy changes had ignited a wave of lawsuits involving 26 attorneys general, multiple nonprofits, school boards, and parents’ groups. One of those chief law enforcers, Texas AG Ken Paxton (R), cheered the ruling as “a victory against government overreach.”
“Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks,” he said in a statement about his suit’s success. “Threatening to withhold education funding by forcing states to accept ‘transgender’ policies that put women in danger was plainly illegal. Texas has prevailed on behalf of the entire Nation.”
While the basket of lawsuits will continue to work their way through the courts, members of Congress are doing what they can to slam the brakes on the president’s wild abuse of power. Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), who’s been on the warpath against the Democrats’ anti-woman agenda, filed a Congressional Review Act this week to prevent schools from losing their federal funding if they don’t follow the White House’s new rules — which she calls “evil.”
“[This] just shows us the importance of having good judges,” she told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.” “And this is a big win for us.” But in the meantime, she vowed, “We’re going to carry on and push back” — whether it’s on the Hill or “whether it’s fathers fighting for their daughters … saying, ‘My daughter is not going to shower with a guy in the girls public school locker room.’”
The idea that this president would try to erase women from their own equal opportunity policy is absurd, Miller argued. “Joe Biden now has radically flipped this on its head because he’s radical, and everything he does is radical. And it’s basically going to force all public schools — even private schools, any school that’s taking any federal money — they’re going to be forced to allow boys and men in girls’ athletics, in their locker rooms, showers. It’s also going to force coerced speech.” Frankly, all this does is create more “chaos,” she argued, especially at a time “when teachers are fired or students are expelled because they’ve misgendered a transgender person.”
Miller’s resolution already has the signature of 70 members, and she believes even more will join the effort. “I mean, it’s only common sense,” the Illinois mom pointed out.
That’s what former All-American swimmer Riley Gaines is hearing as she tours the country on her Take Back Title IX Tour. On Monday, at a stop in Montana before the ruling, she asked, “How many opportunities have to be lost? How many girls have to be exploited in their locker rooms? How many girls have to be injured in their sports” before this changes?
It will take all of us, both Gaines and Miller believe, to take a stand the Left can’t ignore. “In your realm of influence, get involved,” the Illinois leader urged. “If your children or if your daughters are being forced to shower or share a locker room or sports team [with a boy], go to the school and protest. Tell them that you’re going to withdraw your child or transfer them to another school.”
The bottom line is, “We just have to push back. This is evil. And like our good friend Erwin Lutzer says, ‘Evil never retreats on its own — only when it’s confronted by a more powerful force.’” “And we are a force,” Miller insists, “if we do it together.”
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.
