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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.

Links:

When a Problem Affects 545 Native women, It’s a “Crisis.” But if It Affects 1,681 Native Men, It’s Not.

Coalition to End Domestic Violence

January 28, 2022

The problem of murdered and missing Indians has been recognized for years. As early as 2019, the Department of Justice National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NaMus) listed 404 missing Native Americans — 250 males and 154 females.[i]

More recently, the Centers for Disease Control released a detailed report on “Homicides of American Indians/Alaska Natives” spanning the years 2003 to 2018. The CDC report reveals that males represent 75.5% of all Indian victims of homicide — 1,681 male victims and 545 female victims.[ii]

In 2013 Congress added a new section to the federal Violence Against Women Act titled, “Safety for Indian Women.” The record provides no explanation or justification for the exclusion of Indian men.[iii] The VAWA amendment galvanized a fevered national movement known as Murdered and Missing Indian Women, or “MMIW.”

Nine years later, a Google search on the words “murdered and missing indigenous women” turns up 63,300 results. These numbers include media articles, websites, legislative reports, and more.

But a Google search on “murdered and missing indigenous men” turns up a much smaller number — only 1,920 results. Why is there such a disquieting disparity?

Last year, Senators Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska published an editorial titled, “Shocking History of Violence Against Native Women is a Crisis We Can Stop.” The essay repeatedly referred to the “crisis” of murdered, missing, and trafficked Indigenous women.[iv]

But the article made no mention of murdered American Indian men, such as Levi Brian Yellow Mule of the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. Or Russell Shack who was shot by Amber Yazzie during the course of an armed robbery in Gallup, NM. Or the many hundreds of other murdered Indian men.

Apparently, when a problem affects 545 Native women, it’s a “crisis.” But if it affects 1,681 Native men, it’s not.

The American Dream is founded on the pursuit of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Given the pre-eminent importance of “life,” it’s fair to ask: Why do the lives of Native American men seem to count for so much less than the lives of Native American women?

Citations:

[i] https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_are-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-men-us-being-ignored/6176751.html

[ii]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7008a1.htm

[iii] https://www.tribal-institute.org/lists/VAWA_TitleIX.htm

[iv]https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/opinions/violence-against-native-women-children-cortez-masto-murkowski/index.html