Gov. Desantis Says Florida Will Not Comply With New Title IX Rules

Florida Gov. Ron Desantis has opposed President Joe Biden’s Title IX changes that have expanded the laws around sexual discrimination to incorporate gender identity, saying “We will not comply, and we will fight back.”

“We are not gonna let Joe Biden abuse his constitutional authority to impose these policies here on us in Florida … we are not gonna let Biden get away with it,” the governor said in a video posted April 25 on X, formerly Twitter.

Mr. Desantis’s statement follows similar comments by Florida education commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. and Louisiana’s superintendent of education Cade Brumley, who told school officials to ignore the change for the time being.

Title IX legislation, enacted in 1972 to prohibit discrimination based on sex, was expanded on April 19 by the Biden administration to cover discrimination based on “sex stereotypes,” gender identity, or sexual orientation. The changes will also remove some stipulations set in place during the Trump administration, such as a tighter requirement in proving cases of sexual harassment.

President Biden is following through on a campaign promise he made to expand Title IX. The overhaul of Title IX was expected to be enacted last year, but was held back by both lawmaker opposition and a whopping 240,000 public comments submitted over the 30-day public commentary period.

Florida Sens. Marco Rubio (R) and Rick Scott (R), joined by 11 other GOP senators, signed a 2022 letter addressed to the Education Department expressing concern about the proposed changes. The letter stated that the new rules, “if finalized, would actually have the opposite effect of the law’s intent and further erode women’s equality, privacy, and safety.”

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The letter mentioned concerns about the separation of men and women in locker rooms and bathrooms. The authors also stated that the new regulations might violate teachers’ First Amendment rights by forcing them to “affirm”  transgender students’ gender identities.

In response to Mr. DeSantis’s comments, the Department of Education said that all schools receiving federal funding must comply with the Biden administration’s regulations as a condition of receiving federal money.

“The Department crafted the final Title IX regulations following a rigorous process to give complete effect to the Title IX guarantee that no person experiences sex discrimination in federally funded education,” a department spokesperson told The Epoch Times in a statement.

President Biden’s changes were aimed at aligning with the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling of Bostock v. Clayton County, which prohibits employees from being fired over their sexual orientation.

Although Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion that Bostock would only narrowly apply to Title VII, a federal law prohibiting workplace sex discrimination, President Biden issued a sweeping executive order on his first day in office, directing all federal agencies to apply the Bostock framework to all their operations, which led to the Title IX changes.

The new rules do not address transgender participation in school and college sports, which is the subject of an ongoing rulemaking process. The sports’ rules are unlikely to be finalized until after this year’s general election.

The rules also state that Title IX would override any state laws in the event of conflict, which could lead to future challenges against states that have banned transgender athletes from women’s sports.

In the new Title IX, the definition of sexual harassment has been expanded to include “hostile environment harassment,” even if the alleged harassment occurs outside a building or environment owned by the school, or outside the United States.

The rules also contain a requirement that all “non-confidential” school employees must notify a Title IX coordinator if they learn of a violation. This excludes employees such as counselors or health care workers. The previous rules limited the reporting requirement to school employees that had “actual knowledge” of the harassment taking place. In the Trump-era rules, the decision to file a grievance was also left up to the injured party, or to the Title IX coordinator.

The new Title IX regulations are set to take effect on Aug. 1.

Bill Pan contributed to this report.