On the campaign trail last week, Donald Berzilius Trump joined the cabal of Republican governors threatening to undo President Biden's new Title IX rules for education facilities that benefit from public funding. These rules cover matters such as responding to reports of sexual harassment and misconduct, accommodating pregnant students and protecting students from sex-based discrimination.
What has right-wingers' panties in a bunch is that the anti-discrimination rules protect students who are LGBTQ+ — particularly since many Republican-run states have recently passed pro-discrimination laws explicitly targeting transgender persons.
So far, officials in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and South Carolina—most of them governors—have said in letters, statements, press conferences or executive orders that their states will not follow the new Title IX regulations. The rule applies to every school at the K-12 and postsecondary level that receives federal money. So far, most state officials have either focused on K-12 schools or made general statements that their state will not comply, while others have specifically mentioned colleges.
Texas and Louisiana are among the GOP-run states and school boards that have filed challenges to the Biden rules; their cases will go before radical right-wing judges appointed by Trump. That includes the virulently antigay activist Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk (whom I featured here last September and here in November, 2022).
Given the hostility to LGBTQ+ persons of Trump and Dubya Bush appointees taking these cases, not to mention that of the doctrinaire theocrats on the current Supreme Court, transgender student rights could well be doomed whether Trump gets to issue his Reichstag Fire Decrees on Day One or not.
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