Arkansas Gov. Sanders signs EO to protect 'equal athletic opportunities' for women, resist Biden Title IX regs
Gov. Sanders called the Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations, which focus on ‘gender identity,’ a ‘plainly ridiculous change that will lead to males unfairly competing in women’s sports.’
‘The Government should celebrate sex differences between men and women – not erase them,’ she wrote.
On May 2, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order directing the state not to implement the Biden administration’s new rules regarding Title IX.
This April, the Biden administration announced new changes to Title IX that would include “gender identity” as a protected category, triggering backlash.
[RELATED: Over 20 states sue Biden Admin for ‘destroying women’s sports’ with Title IX changes]
“It is declared to be the policy of this state that sex is an immutable characteristic of the human body, rooted in biology and the created order,” Sanders’s executive order states. “The government should celebrate, not erase, sex differences by providing proper protections for them.”
The executive order ensures that female student athletes would not have to face off against male student athletes: “Female students must not be denied equal athletic opportunities or forced to risk their safety by having biological males placed into female-designated sports leagues.”
The executive order also reinforces students’ privacy, guaranteeing that schools would not force them to “shower or undress with members of the opposite sex.”
Additionally, the order states that students and faculty at Arkansas schools will not be compelled to use “false pronouns”: “Students and employees of Arkansas’ educational institutions may not be forced to use false pronouns. The right to refuse to speak a lie is guaranteed in the First Amendment. My administration will continue to protect this fundamental right.”
Sanders opposed the White House’s redefinition of “sex” to “fit its own absurd political ideology” and notes that “‘Sex’ has long been understood as binary biological characteristics.”
Changing Title IX to protect “gender identity,” instead of its original intent of protecting women from discrimination, “is a plainly ridiculous change that will lead to males unfairly competing in women’s sports; receiving access to women’s and girls’ locker rooms, bathrooms, and private spaces; and competing for women’s scholarships,” the governor wrote.
Governor Sanders wrote that Title IX was originally “passed to protect women, not harm them,” and criticized Biden’s changes that aim to “unilaterally rewrite federal law to advance its radical gender ideology against women and girls.”
[RELATED: Mississippi House and Senate pass ‘Women’s Bill of Rights’]
She noted that Title IX initially “contained a succinct 37 words,” but that the new Department of Education regulation has “a staggering 459,804 words, ‘reinterpreting’ Title IX.”
“The Government should celebrate sex differences between men and women – not erase them,” Sanders stated. “The Biden administration’s facially absurd redefinition of sex in Title IX turns back the clock on women’s opportunities, erodes student privacy, threatens women’s sports, and erases women.”
Campus Reform has contacted Gov. Sanders’s office, the University of Arkansas, and Arkansas State University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
