Peace Garden News

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) joined Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) in submitting a comment letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona regarding his department’s proposed changes to Title IX. The rulemaking would force schools to allow biological males and females to compete against each other in sports, undoing critical, longstanding safeguards for women’s athletics.

“This proposed rule is a monumental setback for the generations of women who have benefited from Title IX’s enactment over the last fifty years,” wrote the senators. “The Department should not move forward with this proposed rule, but should instead work with Congress on legislative action meant to strengthen the protections afforded to women in the original statute. Any interpretation of Title IX that permits biological males to participate in female athletics does irreparable harm to women as a protected class under the law.”

Joining Senators Cramer and Tuberville are Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mike Braun (R-IN), Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS), Rick Scott (R-FL), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Mike Lee (R-UT), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Jim Risch (R-ID), Steve Daines (R-MT), Roger Wicker (R-MS), John Barrasso (R-WY), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Ted Budd (R-NC), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA).

Click here to access the senators’ full comment.

Background:

In June 2022, on the 50th anniversary of Title IX’s enactment, the U.S. Department of Education issued a proposal to allow biological males to compete in women’s sports. The Department finalized the rule and expects to make it effective during the 2023-2024 school year.

In the 117th and 118th Congresses, Senator Cramer cosponsored the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. The bill ensures Title IX provisions determine gender “solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth” and bans beneficiaries of federal funding from operating, sponsoring, or facilitating athletic programs which permit males to participate in women’s sporting events.

Original source can be found here.