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News Link • Education: Government Schools

Trump, Title IX, & 2025: Restore Real Learning, Stop Fringe Sexual Politics

• https://www.zerohedge.com, by Teresa Manning

One hopes Trump will immediately undo the damage inflicted by Biden's Education Department, including rescission of the Title IX rule issued in April, already enjoined by federal courts in over half the country. The usual suspects will make the usual noise and claim Trump is "anti-woman" and taking away rights, but if Trump focuses on ending sexual identity politics to restore learning, he will be removing controversy and Title IX abuses, not causing them.

Title IX is the 1972 Congressional ban on sex discrimination in federally funded education.

Called an equal access law for women, it was an outgrowth of equal opportunity initiatives based on race that were popular in the 1960s.

But Title IX soon became the weapon of choice for feminists in government. They quickly interpreted it as requiring identical funding for female sports even when women weren't interested and even as this decimated men's teams. Then, they redefined "discrimination" to encompass "harassment" and "a hostile environment," still nebulous terms that many define as subjective offenses, which are anybody's guess, as the offense changes with the subject. This also makes healthy courtship a minefield since any romantic gesture, such as holding open a door, can offend someone and become a Title IX complaint. Then they expanded "harassment" to include alleged sexual assault, a matter of criminal law at the state level, not civil rights law from Congress. But that didn't stop Obama education officials from directing campus Title IX offices to seek, find, and punish anyone merely accused of sexual misconduct by presuming guilt—an egregious violation of due process. Hundreds of students were suspended or expelled by what were then called campus kangaroo courts.

Biden officials continued this abuse of Title IX by redefining the law's central term "sex" to include same-sex orientation and "gender ideology" such that homosexuals and men pretending to be women (especially on women's sports teams) could claim a Title IX violation when others did not approve or go along.

The silver lining in this radicalization has been the inevitable pushback. Regular citizens have now woken up and are fighting back. For example, Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos reversed the abuses of the Obama administration, stopping campus kangaroo courts by issuing a formal Title IX rule that protected due process for the accused but also mandated support for any accuser. The DeVos rule received an unprecedented 125,000 public comments during the rulemaking process—most positive—showing widespread public support for ending Title IX due process nightmares. What's more, when the DeVos rule was challenged in court, it was upheld as lawful and fair by every judge to review it.