Good Riddance

The outgoing Secretary of Education just passed an edict that flies in the face of the Supreme Court, totally ignoring the court’s ruling last spring.

Title IX Protections Apply Only to ‘Biological Sex,’ Education Department Memo Says
Ed Week
By Mark Walsh
January 10, 2021


The U.S. Department of Education has released an internal memorandum from its acting general counsel that stakes out the view that “sex” in Title IX refers only to biological sex, and that schools do not violate the law by refusing to allow transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms or participate in athletics consistent with their gender identity.

Did you catch that?

The “...that “sex” in Title IX refers only to biological sex” this is from their top lawyer!

Now I am not a lawyer and most of you are probably lot lawyer either but read what the Supreme Court said about Title VII that uses the exact same language as Title IX…

The court found that the statute’s message for these cases “is equally simple and momentous: An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions. That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”

But still the Secretary of Education and her lawyer totally ignored the court. The Ed Week article went on to say,

“[B]ased on controlling authorities, we must give effect to the ordinary public meaning at the time of enactment and construe the term ‘sex’ in Title IX to mean biological sex, male or female,” says the Jan. 8 memorandum from Reed D. Rubinstein, the department’s principal deputy general counsel, to Kimberley M. Richey, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights. “Congress has the authority to rewrite Title IX and redefine its terms at any time. To date, however, Congress has chosen not to do so.”

The Education Department released the memo publicly less than two weeks before President Donald Trump’s term in office ends.

The article also cites the court ruling.

The memo is “is unconscionable and legally flawed,” said a statement from Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based LGBTQ rights organization.
[…]
Rubinstein, in the memo, stresses that the high court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga., concerned Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which covers sex discrimination and certain other forms of workplace bias, and that the ruling did not construe Title IX, a law that primarily concerns discrimination against students.

These conservatives just hate us and are trying to wiggle around the law...

On restrooms and locker rooms, Rubinstein said the Education Department’s controlling 1970s-era Title IX regulations permit “schools to provide separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers ‘on the basis of sex,’ as long as the school provides comparable facilities for ‘each sex.’”

The memo continues: “Therefore, we believe the plain ordinary public meaning of the controlling statutory and regulatory text requires a recipient providing ‘separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex’ to regulate access based on biological sex.”

The thing is that they do not consider us to be women or men which the Supreme Court does.

Thank fully there is only nine days left to Trump’s term and then sanity returns.