'Stop the Title IX Take-Over' rally protests Department of Education

Protesters rallied outside of the Department of Education (DOEd) in Washington D.C on August 11 to protest the Biden administration’s attempt to rewrite Title IX to include protections for transgender students. 

Congress passed Title IX in 1972 to prohibit federally funded institutions from discriminating based on sex. However, the DOEd proposed a new rule in June that would expand the definition to include “sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.”

“Stop the Title IX Take-Over“ was hosted by SAVE, an activist group intent on “assuring fairness and due process in schools.” The event featured 17 speakers who discussed the consequences of expanding the regulation.

National Association of Scholars member Teresa Manning, who spoke at the event, told Campus Reform the push to revise Title IX is an attack to “impose left-wing policies, including redefining sex, to include gender ideology, and also tragically to destroy due process of law.”

Manning placed partial blame on college campuses for aiding the shift to normalize gender identity in policy and stated that leftist indoctrination trickles down from higher education. 

“We also do have to address the swamp, because so much of this is federal bureaucrats, top-down imposing their policies,” she said, “and I guess also scrutinize colleges to ensure your kids are attending schools that are not hopelessly politicized because it’s both top-down and on the ground level of the college campus.”

[RELATED: Female athletes defend Title IX outside White House]

Like Manning, many of the speakers warned that new Title IX regulations would pose a threat to women’s sports, free speech, and due process.

“I refuse to bow to an ideology that wants to erase women, that wants to erase free speech, that wants to obliterate objective truths,” Ryan Bomberger said at the rally, Radiance Foundation “factivist.”

Bomberger warned that the growing trend of accepting transgender policies in society would erode free speech rights. He referred to two isolated incidents of Wisconsin students and a Virginia teacher reprimanded by the education system for refusing to use preferred pronouns and names.

“Leftists understand that deliberate confusion is power,” he said. “Miseducation is power. But Americans need to understand there is a difference between being empowered and being fooled by those in power.”

Campus Reform has previously reported on the conflict over Title IX regulations, as it spurred the NCAA permitted University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer, Lia Thomas, to compete in the 2022 Women’s Swimming Championship last March. 

The administration has adamantly claimed the revised regulation would not impact women’s sports. However, Elizabeth Tew, Communications Director for Independent Women’s Voice, pushed back against this in a speech at the rally.

“They clearly do [impact women’s sports], because [Title IX] applies to all aspects of the educational experience,” she said. “This is wrong, and this is not fair.”

Tew claimed that wide-grown acceptance of transgender athletes will cost women athletic and scholarship opportunities.

“We will not be silent when so-called inclusive policies are created on the backs on women and girls. This is not inclusion. This is misogyny,” she said.

[RELATED: Federal judge halts Biden’s Title IX changes]

Sarah Parshall Perry, Senior Legal Fellow at Heritage Foundation, came down on the administration for allegedly catering to the “six-tenths of 1%.”

“This administration has turned the nature of American democracy on its head, by bending that 99 to the will of the one, or more accurately, the six-tenths of 1%,” she said at the rally. 

In June of this year, Campus Reform reported on a May Washington Post-University of Maryland poll that found the majority of Americans oppose biological men competing in women’s sports. 

58% of respondents stated men “should not be allowed” to compete against women at the collegiate and professional level, while 55% opposed it at the high school level. 

New Title IX changes are still under deliberation. The regulation will remain in a public comment stage until September 12, and members of the public are encouraged to file comments via the Federal Registrar. 

Campus Reform contacted every speaker mentioned for comment as well as the DOEd. This article will be updated accordingly.

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