Like with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), schools are trying to subvert President Donald Trump’s commonsense executive order on “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism.”
This EO states that there are only two genders and that President Joe Biden’s position on Title IX harmed women and girls. Here is an excerpt:
The prior Administration argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which addressed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces under, for example, Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act. This position is legally untenable and has harmed women. The Attorney General shall therefore immediately issue guidance to agencies to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to sex-based distinctions in agency activities. In addition, the Attorney General shall issue guidance and assist agencies in protecting sex-based distinctions, which are explicitly permitted under Constitutional and statutory precedent.
Our first story, as you may have guessed, is about Title IX. In Montgomery County, Virginia, Title IX compliance officer Leah Bressler sent an email to Brett Sokolow, the Association of Title IX Administrators advisory board chair, two days after Trump’s executive order. Virginia has in place a law that states students need to use the bathroom of their sex, regardless of “gender identity.” Bressler, in wanting to get around this law, wrote:
This is just a brainstorm. … What if the system just moved to a code of conduct that provided the Title IX framework to any allegation for any reason that violated the Davis standard? With support services, monitoring, documentation as required in Title IX — but open the gate to entire conduct policy? Our jurisdiction has protections in our policy manual for gender identity — if the policies applied to everything equally across the board — couldn’t the system maintain the protections?
The Davis Standard refers to the Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education Supreme Court decision in which a school is not held responsible for sexual harassment if it has no knowledge of it. Bressler believes she can apply this standard to the existing policy on gender identity and not have to obey the attorney general’s guidance or Virginia state law.
Sokolow responded:
This is too state-specific for me to really be able to opine on, Leah. It’s clever, but I have no idea if it would work to skirt the limitations that VA is enacting. My suspicion is that state legislatures will punish cleverness, in the long run (see Texas). Meaning, that if school officials like you find legit ways to work around the state limitations, the state will learn from this and respond by tightening its limitations.
This might be a viable strategy for you, or at least a good delaying tactic, but I don’t think it has legs in the long term. I think if it walks like a Title IX duck, it’s not going to matter what container we place it in. But, fight the good fight. I’m just giving you thoughts on whether your idea is a winner … but it might be good to go down fighting.
In other words, leftist activists are working against the interests and intent of Title IX protections. It’s not surprising, and it should be dealt with.
These emails were exposed by Speech First and shared with The Daily Wire.
Our next story is about parental rights and schools usurping those rights with gender ideology. January and Jeffrey Littlejohn are residents of Leon County, Florida, and their daughter fell victim to her school’s brainwashing on gender ideology at age 13. The school went to great lengths to hide the social transition from January and Jeffry because it was following its own LGBTQ+ school guidelines. It’s an all-too-familiar story: A child gets sucked into the gender ideology vortex through the school, which in turn helps hide it from that child’s parents.
The Littlejohns sued when they found out. They lost 2-1 at the Eleventh Circuit. They provided proof that the school violated their rights, but not that it “shocked the conscience” (which is apparently the other standard they were supposed to prove). As a layman, this seems ridiculous on its face. The school lied to the parents about a child’s “gender transition.” If that alone doesn’t “shock the conscience,” we have truly become numb as a society.
For now, the school district is getting away with it. The Littlejohns are not done fighting, however. They have filed for a full court review of their case since the ruling contradicts previous Supreme Court and even Eleventh Circuit rulings in similar cases.
The Manhattan Institute’s Ilya Shapiro underlined the grave effect of allowing such conduct from the schools, which has more dire consequences than just loss of trust from parents. He states:
With the Department of Health and Human Services having just released a major report that raises serious concerns about hormonal and other medical interventions relating to gender, we should be careful about leading kids down that primrose path. And politicized school boards and taxpayer-funded administrators should be the last people we entrust with directing young people’s decisions that go far beyond educational or professional development.
The lies that are implanted in these children’s heads have real-world consequences. The deceit destroys their mental health, their interaction with their peers, and even their physical well-being. It all starts with a lie promoted by activist educators who are not going to be there for these children when they hit rock bottom.
This continuing evidence of subversion on behalf of a destructive ideology by educators and administrators is troubling but not surprising, considering what they are trying to do with DEI. Leftists don’t change; they just rebrand or push to see what they can still get away with. Their ideas are destroying lives and families and should be confronted and exposed.
