The Trump administration on Friday launched a joint special investigation team between the Education Department and the Justice Department to address the influx of Title IX investigations into educational institutions, largely related to the participation of biological males in female sports.
The task force will seek to provide justice for “women and girls across this nation who have been subjected to discrimination and indignity in their educational activities.” The Trump administration characterized requiring female athletes to compete with biological males as a discriminatory practice.
The task force will allow the administration to rapidly work through complaints, which traditionally takes the Office for Civil Rights “months, even years” to complete, according to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
“OCR under this Administration has moved faster than it ever has, and the Title IX SIT will ensure even more rapid and consistent investigations,” McMahon said in a statement. “To all the entities that continue to allow men to compete in women’s sports and use women’s intimate facilities: there’s a new sheriff in town. We will not allow you to get away with denying women’s civil rights any longer.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that protecting female civil rights and sports has been a top priority of the Trump administration.
“This collaborative effort with the Department of Education will enable our attorneys to take comprehensive action when women’s sports or spaces are threatened and use the full power of the law to remedy any violation of women’s civil rights,” Bondi said.
The task force will be composed of investigators and attorneys from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, the Education Department Office of General Counsel, the DOJ Civil Rights Division, and case workers from the Education Department’s Student Privacy and Protect Office.
Nicole Neily, founder and president of Parents Defending Education, praised the Trump administration for creating the task force. She criticized the Biden administration for failing to address these complaints promptly and for its rewrite of Title IX, which expanded protections for gender identity.
“The last administration not only distorted Title IX’s original intent by broadening the meaning of sex discrimination to include gender identity, but they also failed to address the massive backlog of complaints in this area (including on issues like compelled pronoun usage, the participation of boys in girls’ sports, and the privacy of women-only spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms),” Neily said in a statement.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO KEY EDUCATION DEPARTMENT PROGRAMS IF TRUMP SHUTS IT DOWN
President Donald Trump directed his administration to apply Title IX on the basis of biological sex. He signed an executive order to protect female student-athletes from having “to compete with or against or having to appear unclothed before males.”
The Trump administration has gone back and forth with the Maine Department of Education for failing to comply with federal directives on Title IX by allowing transgender-identifying biological male athletes to compete in female sports.
