Mississippi is suing the federal government for rewording Title IX to include additional protections for LGBTQ+ individuals.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed the lawsuit challenging a rule set forth by the Biden administration that broadens the scope of the 1972 law intended to prevent discrimination based on sex within educational facilities that receive federal funding.
The new rule by the federal government goes a step further and outlaws discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Fitch argues that this is an attempt to prohibit institutions from enforcing rules allowing individuals only to use restrooms, locker rooms, and other gender-specific spaces that coincide with their birth-assigned sex.
She and the attorneys general of Louisiana, Idaho, and Montana believe this rule sets up a framework to make female athletes compete with transgender athletes for spots on teams and awards in competitions, which, they argue, undoes decades of progress made in giving women an equal opportunity to thrive in education and athletics.
“Title IX has been a game-changer for generations of women,” Fitch said. “For more than fifty years, it has given girls an opportunity to compete on a level playing field and offered them a fair chance to excel. The Biden Administration’s pursuit of an extremist political agenda here will destroy these important gains. What’s more, under this new rule, safe and private spaces for women to engage in healing, fellowship, and support will be torn away from them. The Administration’s legal theories are novel, at best, and they cut legal corners to push them through, and we intend to defeat this rule in the courts.”
According to Fitch, the rule compels school officials both to use pronouns associated with a student’s claimed “gender identity” and to force students to do so as well.
“And school officials should be careful about requesting documentation to verify the sincerity of a person’s claimed gender identity, the Department ominously warns, because that itself might violate the Final Rule,” the attorneys general wrote. “Moreover, although the Department tries to downplay the Rule’s impact on athletics – because the Department knows that extending its radical theory to athletics would be political suicide in an election year – the Rule cannot help but sound the death knell for female sports.”
Mississippi has passed legislation in recent years to establish spaces that exist for biological females only. In 2021, Governor Tate Reeves signed the Fairness Act into law to prevent transgender individuals from competing in women’s sports.
The state legislature is also currently considering the SAFER Act and the Women’s Bill of Rights. Fitch adds that the Biden administration’s rule contradicts efforts in Mississippi to protect women’s safe spaces.
