Right-wing media are targeting the newly released Title IX rule changes, attempting to simultaneously claim that its protections for trans girls and women pose a threat to other girls and women — against clear evidence to the contrary — while also objecting to reinstated rules protecting victims of sexual misconduct.
Following a period of public comment, the Biden administration on April 19 released its final proposed changes to Title IX, the decades-old civil rights law that bars discrimination based on sex at any federally funded education program. First proposed in 2022, the changes set to go into effect at the start of August would undo policies set in place by the Trump administration that limited the types of misconduct schools were required to address, which drew condemnation from victims’ rights advocates.
The new regulations require schools to address other forms of misconduct, including dating violence, domestic violence, stalking, and sex-based harassment. Victims’ rights advocates including the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence and the Victims Rights Law Center have applauded the new rules.
The changes would also expand Title IX protections to explicitly protect students from discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy status. The rules, however, make no mention of athletics, with protections for trans athletes proposed in a separate plan that has been delayed.
Right-wing media baselessly claim protections for trans students would endanger cis girls and women
Despite years of fearmongering by right-wing media, trans-inclusive spaces have been consistently shown to pose no greater threat to the safety of cis girls and women. In contrast, most sexual assaults on college campuses are perpetrated by cis men.
Notably, trans teenagers face a greater threat of sexual assault when denied access to spaces corresponding to their gender, a fact made all the more stark by the rising number of bills restricting trans students’ access to bathrooms and changing rooms. Trans students are also far more likely to report harassment and violence than their cis peers and are significantly more likely to be the victims of sexual assault. However, numerous right-wing outlets and figures responded to the Biden administration’s new Title IX rules by erroneously claiming that adding protections for trans students and staff would endanger cis girls and women.
- On the April 23 edition of Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime, host Jesse Watters claimed the new Title IX regulations were “putting the interest of deranged surgeons above the rights and safety of young women” over a chyron reading “Title 9 is now stacked against our girls.”
- An op-ed for Fox News co-written by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey with former college swimmer and anti-trans activist Riley Gaines criticized the proposed rules and lauded states for refusing to implement the Title IX changes. Morrisey and Gaines claimed that policies banning trans women from women’s bathrooms, changing rooms, and prisons were designed to protect “women’s safety and security,” and that “pretending these differences don’t matter puts women at risk of assault and physical injury.”
- Speaking with Fox News’ America Reports on April 22, ex-coach Kim Russell, an ambassador for conservative group the Independent Women’s Forum, criticized the new rules and claimed cis girls’ and womens’ “safety and protection is being taken away by allowing fully intact males into our locker rooms and private spaces.” Concluding the interview, Russell asked, “Where is that #MeToo movement now?”
- Speaking to Townhall, Parents Defending Education Vice President Caroline Moore claimed, “Not only will this change effectively eliminate the intended purpose of Title IX, it will open the floodgates for Districts to require minor females to share restrooms and spaces with male students and teachers, leading to an increase in sexual harassment and sexual assault.”
- In an April 19 piece for the Washington Examiner, Jeremiah Poff claimed that in passing protections for trans students and staff, “the Department of Education has ensured that a high school boy with perverse intent can simply walk into a girls’ bathroom if he tells an administrator that he identifies as a girl, and the high school must, by law, allow him to use that facility.”
- The Federalist published an April 25 article by the Independent Women’s Forum’s Ginny Gentles claiming “the new Title IX regulations socially engineer every component of the educational environment to create dangerous and unwelcoming schools for girls and young women.”
- An opinion piece for Newsmax by conservative writer Michael Dorstewitz condemned the new rules for protecting access to gendered spaces, claiming that “the rule change doesn’t protect girls and women as Title IX was designed — it sets them up to become victims. It’s now a weapon to be used against girls and women.”
Outlets and figures that argued against added protections for trans students have also helped to drive harassment against those students. In 2022, Fox News, Libs of TikTok, and Newsmax targeted a trans middle schooler, their school, and its staff for filing a Title IX investigation in response to physical violence and persistent harassment against the student. Six bomb threats were directed at the school and a man was arrested for threatening to kill a teacher following the right-wing media outrage. After facing the threats, the school dropped the Title IX investigation.
Right-wing media also criticized new protections for victims of sexual assault
The new Title IX rules also add protections for victims of sexual assault and harassment — the majority of whom are girls and women, particularly on college campuses. In spite of right-wing media’s professed concern for girls and women, conservative outlets and pundits also objected to these regulations as a violation of due process for those accused of sexual misconduct.
- Writing for National Review, T. Markus Funk focused on criticizing the new protections for victims of sexual assault, claiming the regulations “raise genuine questions over procedural fairness and the factual accuracy of campus ‘guilt’ determinations.” He went on to warn that “disciplinary sanctions predictably carry life-changing professional, academic, and reputational consequences.”
- An editorial from National Review titled “Biden’s Attack on Women’s Sports” largely focused on how the regulations would purportedly override trans athlete bans despite athletics not being included in the final rules. It also attacked the new Title IX regulations for undoing the changes made under the Trump administration (the ones denounced by victims’ rights advocates), championing the Trump-era rules for focusing on “robust due-process protocols for those accused of sexual misconduct.” The editorial concluded that “Biden is attempting to deliver on a campaign promise to restore the campus kangaroo courts of the Obama era and appease the LGBTQ activists in his base.”
- A New York Post opinion piece by columnist Kirsten Fleming similarly criticized the new regulations, saying the change “usher in a return to Obama-era kangaroo courts on college campuses and reverses the Trump administration’s return to sanity.”
- In an interview with The Daily Wire, Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Sarah Parshall Perry criticized the new rules protecting victims of sexual assault, claiming they meant “that any individual, after a regretful decision one night, could accuse another of having engaged in sexual assault without that individual’s opportunity to do anything but sit there, listen, and ultimately make the case for why the other accusing individual is wrong.”
- In a post on X (formerly Twitter), ex-Fox News host Megyn Kelly criticized “THIS ABOMINATION OF A TITLE IX REVISION,” writing, “Your son will be stripped of his due process rights if he is accused by anyone on campus of sexual misconduct - his life will be over just w/the accusation. No right to cross examine, back to kangaroo ‘courts’ and he will be expelled and labeled a sex offender based on NOTHING.”
- Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk claimed that the new rules would result in “hundreds of men who did nothing wrong being suspended, expelled, and tainted for life because of a bad breakup or literally nothing at all.”
- A segment from the April 22 edition of Fox News’ The Faulkner Focus featuring Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth bemoaned that college campuses had “gotten to the point where you’re guilty when accused if you’re believing all women or believing everybody of a certain perspective” and claimed the new rules will “create a lot of additional accusations.” Hegseth and host Harris Faulkner followed this criticism of the Title IX protections for victims by making baseless accusations that trans-inclusive spaces pose a threat to cis girls and women.
Clarification (5/14/24): This piece has been updated to clarify T. Markus Funk's characterization of the regulations.
