Title IX Protects LGBTQ Students; More State Bullying Threatens School Funding

Reversing the bullying, discriminatory policy of America’s recent dictator, the Biden Adminstration yesterday formally declared that gay and transgender students are protected by the sexual discrimination provisions of Title IX:

Wednesday’s news comes one year after the Supreme Court ruled gay and transgender workers are protected by the Civil Rights Act, legislation that bans discrimination in the workplace. The Education Department’s interpretation says gay and transgender students will have those same protections in schools.

The new guidance is particularly important for students in places where state-level protections for transgender youth don’t exist, said Christy Mallory, legal director at the University of California-Los Angeles’ Williams Institute, which conducts research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and policy.

…While the new rules don’t explicitly mention transgender athletes, Mallory suspects specific guidance is coming. Either way, complaints regarding LGBTQ discrimination in athletics could be investigated under the updated Title IX guidance, as the law covers sports [Erin Richards, Alia Wong, and Lindsay Schnell, “Transgender Students Protected at School by Title IX, Department of Education Says,” USA Today, 2021.06.16].

Translation: if South Dakota Republicans keep bullying transgender kids, they could cost our K-12 schools millions of dollars in federal funding. Uncle Sam poured $213 million into South Dakota K-12 schools in Fiscal Year 2020, and that was under a White House bully who actually encouraged us to bully transgender kids. We wore ourselves out in 2016 just trying to come up with a plan to raise maybe a third of that much money to raise teacher pay to 39th in the nation (which plan has largely failed). Do something stupid like a ban on transgender athletes that torpedoes our federal education funding, and we’ll never patch that hole.

The culture war is all fun and games until your state loses $213 million and has to raise your sales tax another two percentage points to keep your schools open.