Department of Education Weakens Trans Protections
The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) announced Monday that it has terminated agreements the Obama and Biden administrations reached with five school districts and one college aimed at making transgender students a protected class.
The decision means the department will no longer enforce those agreements, which previously required schools to take specific steps to comply with federal civil rights law regarding gender identity. The affected institutions include the Fife School District in Washington; the Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware; the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District in California; the Sacramento City Unified School District; the Delaware Valley School District in rural eastern Pennsylvania; and Taft College in California.
Both the Obama and Biden administrations had expanded the interpretation of Title IX—which prohibits sex discrimination in education—to include protections for gay and transgender students.
“Today, the Trump Administration is removing the unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a DOE news release.
Since taking office last year, President Trump has been dismantling protections granted to gay and transgender students regarding gender identity, bathroom use, and sports participation. The administration has argued that participation in sports should be based on biological sex at birth rather than gender identity, citing an increasing problem of biological males competing in women’s sports and capturing titles that otherwise would have gone to female athletes.
With just under three years remaining in his term, Trump has shown he is serious about restoring what he considers “sanity” to education—and he appears to be just getting started.
Don Irvine
Donald Irvine is the chairman of of Accuracy in Academia (AIA), a non-profit research group reporting on bias in education. Irvine follows his father’s legacy, Reed Irvine, to critically analyze the liberal media’s bias and brings over thirty years of media analysis experience. He has published countless blog posts and articles on media bias, in context of current events, and he has been interviewed by many news media outlets during his professional career. He currently hosts a livestream weekly show on AIA’s Facebook page which discusses current events.
Irvine graduated from the University of Maryland and rose up the ranks to become chairman of Accuracy in Media until his transition to AIA.
He resides in the suburbs around the nation’s capital and is a proud father and grandfather.
