(Danielle Gallant) – Women fought hard for their own space in college sports under Title IX, and their success should be seen as a roadmap for the trans community.
Title IX is well known for establishing and protecting women athletics. However, modern interpretations often go much further than merely allowing women an opportunity to compete within their own division.
According to Google AI, “the foundation of Title IX protects people from discrimination based on sex or sexual stereotyping in educational settings.”
Southern University of New Orleans describes Title IX as protecting, “any person from sex-based discrimination, regardless of their real or perceived sex, gender identity, and/or gender expression.
Female, male and gender non-conforming students, faculty and staff are protected from any sex-based discrimination, harassment or violence.”
These explanations are fairly new interpretations of Title IX which led me to research the explanation and intent of the 1972 Title IX addition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many may wonder why the title’s original intent is important.
I’m not an attorney, but as a legislator I understand that courts will regularly review the hearings of a bill to understand the intent of the legislature that passed a particular law to better understand how it should be applied most faithfully.
In my deep dive, I learned that Title IX did not specifically address sports, but rather addressed employment and admissions discrimination in educational institutions. “Sex” was added to the list of protected classes, to be included with race, color, and national origin, to ensure women were given the same opportunities as men in educational institutions.
The intent of the 1972 Title IX Act was enacted to protect women’s civil rights by ensuring they would not be denied certain opportunities in educational institutions simply because of their sex.
So how did we get to where we are today with the way protections for transgender individuals have been interpreted under Title IX?
Multiple lower courts over the past 4 years have ruled in favor of extending Title IX protections to sexual orientation or gender identity with the most notable case being the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock vs Clayton County.
These various cases have addressed “sex” discrimination with regards to admissions and employment in educational institutions and those rulings have been extended to include similar protections in sports — justifying trans-athletes’ participation in collegiate athletics, even if it means allowing biological males to compete in an athletic space that had previously been a safe-place for female athletes.
The 2021, the DOJ manual on Title IX echoes similar legal guidance stating that “transgender” individuals are protected under the classification of “sex” of the Civil Rights Act of 1972.
Yet, I go back to my question of original intent and conclusion that the intent of Title IX was to protect women’s civil rights in educational settings which happened to extend to sports as a by-product.
So now we need to question as a society, how do we provide equal protections to women and transgender athletes simultaneously?
Many on the progressive side insist that “women” are defined by nothing other than their self-proclaimed sexual identity—insisting that a trans individual merely “feeling” like a woman is somehow the same as someone born a biological female.
However, hundreds of years of science and biology have proven that females and males have distinct biological differences. Males, inherently, have many physical advantages over females in terms of core strength and other physical attributes—many of which become critically important when considering the physicality of certain sports.
It was this conflict—the need to balance biological disadvantages with the ideal of social equality—that we grappled with when looking at how Title IX was to apply to women’s inclusion in sports.
At the time, when women were fighting to have standing in educational settings, women asked to be given the same treatment and consideration as men when it came to educational opportunities.
It was and still is a fair ask since no scientific studies have proven that male and female brains have any advantage over another — although I do frequently tease my husband that women may hold a small advantage in that respect as several studies show intelligence is passed down through the mother.
However, in the case of physicality, biological women did not make the ask to compete in men’s sports. Instead, they fought to have their own divisions where the physical difference between the two biological sexes wouldn’t destroy their hope for equal opportunity.
I recall many educational institutions at the time did not even want to offer women’s divisions — but thanks to Title IX, they were required to establish women’s divisions in a multitude of athletic endeavors in the name of equal rights.
It’s important for us to ask ourselves how allowing trans-athletes to participate in divisions that women had fought so hard to make their own is an advancement of civil rights. The success women have had since 1972 creating their own divisions should be a roadmap for the trans community.
It would therefore seem logical that trans athletes —who, by definition, are biologically different from their fellow competitors in women-only sports divisions — should follow the footsteps of female athletes using Title IX to establish their own divisions and create equal opportunities to thrive in their own space.
For more from Danielle Gallant, a concerned mother and small business owner who stumbled into politics and still can’t quite figure out how she got there—or why she keeps going — follow her Instagram, TikTok or X.com.
