(CNSNews.com) - President-elect Joe Biden is promising that on “his first day in office” he will issue an order requiring all schools that receive federal funding to let transgenders play on the sports teams and use the bathrooms and locker rooms that accord with their “gender identity.”
Biden will take office next Wednesday, January 20.
On his campaign website Biden promised to: “Ensure young LGBTQ+ people are supported and protected in our schools and college campuses by: Guaranteeing transgender students have access to facilities based on their gender identity.”
“On his first day in office," says Biden’s website, “Biden will reinstate the Obama-Biden guidance revoked by the Trump-Pence Administration, which will restore transgender students’ access to sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity. He will direct his Department of Education to vigorously enforce and investigate violations of transgender students’ civil rights.”
Biden’s campaign website links to the “Obama-Biden guidance” this passage references. It was issued by the Obama Justice Department and Department of Education on May 13, 2016.
It says in part: “Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) and its implementing regulations prohibit sex discrimination in educational programs and activities operated by recipients of Federal financial assistance. This prohibition encompasses discrimination based on a student’s gender identity, including discrimination based on a student’s transgender status.”
“Gender identity refers to an individual’s internal sense of gender,” says this Obama-Biden order. “A person’s gender identity may be different from or the same as the person’s sex assigned at birth.”
“Transgender describes those individuals whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth,” says the order. “A transgender male is someone who identifies as male but was assigned the sex of female at birth; a transgender female is someone who identifies as female but was assigned the sex of male at birth.”
“The Departments [of Justice and Education] treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for purposes of Title IX and its implementing regulations. This means that a school must not treat a transgender student differently from the way it treats other students of the same gender identity.”
The Obama-Biden order goes on to specifically state that schools must give transgender students access to the sports teams and restrooms and locker rooms that accord with their “gender identity” not their actual biological sex.
“A school may provide separate facilities on the basis of sex, but must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity,” says the order. “A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so. A school may, however, make individual-user options available to all students who voluntarily seek additional privacy.”
“Title IX regulations permit a school to operate or sponsor sex-segregated athletics teams when selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill or when the activity involved is a contact sport,” says the order. “A school may not, however, adopt or adhere to requirements that rely on overly broad generalizations or stereotypes about the differences between transgender students and other students of the same sex (i.e., the same gender identity) or others’ discomfort with transgender students.”
The order notes that transgender students do not need to undergo any sort of medical “treatment” before schools must treat them according to their gender identity.
It cites a court case that said: “An agency may not condition access to facilities—or to other terms, conditions, or privileges of employment—on the completion of certain medical steps that the agency itself has unilaterally determined will somehow prove the bona fides of the individual’s gender identity.”
“Under Title IX,” the Obama-Biden order says, “there is no medical diagnosis or treatment requirement that students must meet as a prerequisite to being treated consistent with their gender identity.”