Title IX Investigations across the US

The debate of what Title IX entails has been an ongoing topic of discussion across the US for the past decade. When the civil rights law was first introduced in 1972, it focused on the general idea that male and female students should be treated with the same respect within the schools and financially. To be specific, the law directly states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” (US Department of Education). However, as society has evolved and began to acknowledge the lgbtq+ community, the interpretation of this law has differing opinions between political parties. As it pertains to sports the democratic party, by and large, believes that Title IX should protect transgender students by respecting their gender identity and therefore allowing an assigned male at birth the ability to partake in a female sport. On the other hand, the republican party, by and large, have the opinion that by allowing transgender athletes to participate in the sport that aligns with their gender identity, they would be infringing upon the very rights that Title IX ensures protection from with the focus primarily being those assigned male at birth but identify as female participating in female sports. There has been a lot of back and forth legally on the subject with the first step towards transgender inclusion taken in 2016 under President Obama where he urged schools to address and treat transgender students according to their gender identity. However, this guidance was quickly rescinded by President Trump the following year. Since then, twenty seven states have passed laws restricting or banning the transgender youth from playing on teams that align with their gender identity rather than gender at birth. 

However, this is not only a debate for the youth, but has made its way into collegiate sports as well with the most notable event being between University of Kentucky’s Riley Gaines and UPenn’s Lia Thomas. Thomas is a trans woman who tied with Gaines in an NCAA championship for swimming, but was awarded a 5th place ranking while Gaines was awarded 6th place. After learning that Thomas is a transgender woman, Gaines claimed the race was unfair, especially since Thomas participated on the men’s swimming team just a year prior. This caused a major rift in the public with many taking the side of Riley Gaines but with many taking the side of Lia Thomas, as well. After this dispute came to the attention of the NCAA, the organization has chosen to implement rules against allowing transgender participation in female oriented sports out of concerns of safety and fairness. The goal of Title IX is to protect athletes regardless of their gender, however, this raises concerns on what is deemed fair or not especially within the transgener community. As of now, a majority of states are prioritizing the rights and protection of cis gendered students and athletes as opposed to prioritizing the inclusivity of transgender individuals. Many have pondered the idea of creating sports organizations geared towards transgender individuals to allow them to still participate in sports, but avoiding the debate of how fair it may or may not be. It will be interesting to see where this debate takes the world of sports in the future.