Biden Withdraws Title IX Plan, Marking Ignominious End to Catherine Lhamon’s Stint at DOE

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Robert Thompson: 301-801-0608

Biden Withdraws Title IX Plan, Marking Ignominious End to Catherine Lhamon’s Stint at DOE

WASHINGTON / December 23, 2024 – This past Friday the U.S. Department of Education withdrew the plan to enact its controversial Title IX sports rule. The DOE announced in dry regulatory language, “The U.S. Department of Education (Department) is withdrawing the notice of proposed rulemaking entitled ‘Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance: Sex-Related Eligibility Criteria for Male and Female Athletic Teams,’ published in the Federal Register on April 13, 2023.” (1)

The Title IX sports rule would have implemented a Marxist vision to remove all social distinctions in society, including differences based on sex (2). In the words of feminist Shulamith Firestone, the goal was the elimination of the “sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally…The tyranny of the biological family would be broken.” (3)

On his first day in office on January 20, 2021, president Joe Biden issued an Executive Order ordering all Executive Branch agencies to “prevent and combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.” (4)

The Biden plan to issue new Title IX regulations, including the Title IX sports rule, sparked an unprecedented wave of national opposition:

A coalition of 240 national, state, and local organizations opposed to the rule came together to establish the Title IX Network (5).
Public opinion polls revealed a strong majority of Americans opposed the plan (6).
Twenty-five states passed laws banning the participation of men from women’s sports (7).
In August, all nine Supreme Court justices issued a ruling expressing their opposition to the Biden plan to redefine sex to include “gender identity” (8).

On April 19, 2024 the DOE issued its overall Title IX regulation that changed the definition of sex to include “gender identity.” Commentator Aaron Flanigan warned, “American parents are standing on the precipice of one of the most far-reaching, extremist, and dangerous transformations of the education system in American history.” (9) Within weeks, numerous lawsuits were filed, resulting in federal judges blocking the new policy in 26 states (10).

The development of the ill-fated Title IX rules was overseen by Catherine Lhamon, head of the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights. During her Senate confirmation hearing, Lamon was asked whether she supported the presumption of innocence in campus Title IX proceedings. Under intense questioning, Lhamon would only admit that Title IX adjudicators “should be open to the possibility” that the accused student is not guilty (11).

After Lhamon’s nomination was confirmed, she took an Oath of Office promising that I “do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But her Title IX regulation violated that oath by seeking to weaken the Fourteenth Amendment by removing key due process protections for falsely accused men (12).

Lhamon’s resignation from her federal employment is believed to be forthcoming.

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