News Release
INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita is suing the U.S. Department of Education over the rights of girls and women via a rewrite of the Title IX rule.
The new rule allows biological men in the private spaces of girls and women, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, according to a news release from Rokita.
“We cannot effectively protect women’s rights — or even their physical safety — if we refuse to acknowledge there are in fact two sexes, male and female — and only two sexes,” Rokita said. “We cannot function effectively as a republic if we deny the basic facts of creation.”
The six-state lawsuit is being spearheaded alongside Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virgini, and Virginia.
Enacted in 1972, Title IX helped equalize women’s access to educational facilities and programs by barring discrimination based on sex by federally funded schools. At the same time, because of the physical differences between men and women, Title IX has always allowed sex-segregated spaces, like bathrooms and locker rooms.
The new Department of Education rule, said to confront “gender identity discrimination,” essentially abolishes sex-based distinctions in educational activities and programs, according to Rokita. It forces Indiana and other states to “accept radical gender ideology in our schools,” according to Rokita.
The Department of Education has adopted the new rule despite Congress not extending Title IX’s protections to anything other than sex, according to the news release.
If the Department of Education’s rewrite of Title IX is allowed to stand, Indiana schools will have to allow males self-identifying as female — in every grade from preschool through college — to use girls’ and women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, play on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and access other female-only activities and spaces or risk losing billions in federal funding, according to Rokita.
“Congress intended Title IX to prevent discrimination against girls and women,” Rokita said. “The point was to encourage increased participation by girls and women in middle school, high school and college athletics. Now leftists are trying to twist Title IX to codify the very kind of anti-woman prejudice and discrimination this law was originally intended to remedy. With this lawsuit, we intend to stop this travesty.”
