Over the past several months, United States President Joe Biden and his administration have been moving forward with plans that would change Title IX to also protect the rights of transgender women. But on Monday, a group of Republican senators called for Biden to back off from that plan.
On Monday, a group of 22 Republican senators led by Sen. Tommy Tuberville – a former college football head coach – called on Joe Biden and his administration to withdraw their plans to change Title IX, arguing that the change would adversely affect women.
“Congress made clear that its intention in passing Title IX was to prohibit discrimination against women participating fully in all aspects of athletic and academic opportunity at institutions that received federal financial assistance,” the senators wrote, according to the Washington Examiner. “This proposed rule uses weakly-associated case law and polarizing social concepts to broaden the definition of women and girls to include individuals who identify as women, and in doing so, the intent of the law is destroyed and women are marginalized yet again.”
It’s a major move in the heated debate about whether or not transgender women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, and it elicited quite a strong response on social media.
This move comes after the Republican-led House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would ban public schools and universities from allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports. However, that bill will not pass through Senate and would not be signed into law by Biden.