Lafayette Reporter

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) introduced a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act to prevent the Biden administration’s Department of Education from implementing its Omnibus Title IX Rule on August 1, 2024.

On April 19, 2024, the Biden administration released a rule amending Title IX to expand the definition of sex discrimination to include “sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation and gender identity.”

“For 50 years, Title IX has protected women and girls. With its new rule, the Biden administration wants to throw safeguards for females out the window by giving biological men access to their legal protections and private spaces. Congress should immediately block this attempt to appease radical gender activists at the expense of women and girls,” said Kennedy.

“President Biden’s Title IX regulation stretches the law beyond reason, ignores basic biological facts, and infringes on the rights of parents and teachers. It is a backward rule that only hurts women and girls by stripping away opportunities and rights they have enjoyed for decades. We must save Title IX by stopping this radical rule,” stated Hyde-Smith.

Kennedy elaborated on his concerns during a press conference: “The debate that President Biden's rule has provoked [could] profit—it seems to me—from some facts: It begins in a mother's womb. Even before birth, it is a biological fact that baby boys begin developing different hormones and different skeletal structures in the mother’s womb that help them outperform girls athletically. That’s just a biological fact.”

“That’s why we have had women’s sports and men’s sports, and that’s why Congress passed Title IX to try to provide equality for both,” he explained.

In May, Kennedy examined what he perceives as issues with the Biden rule in an op-ed titled "President Biden Has Jumped the Title IX Shark," published in Newsweek.