It’s Time For Washington To Protect Our Daughters

By Kevin Roberts & Sarah Parshall Perry, The Daily Signal | December 04, 2024

America wants Republicans to roll back the Left’s “transgender” agenda. Here’s how they can do it. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, a case challenging a 2023 Tennessee law banning genital surgery and puberty blockers for minors suffering from gender dysphoria. The case is an important reminder that, despite overwhelming popular opposition to the transgender movement, rolling back the Left’s last four years of transgender ideology won’t come easy.

Consider the flack that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson faced just last month when—prompted by the election of Tim McBride, a “transgender” congressman from Delaware—he announced a new rule ensuring that the women’s restrooms and locker rooms in Congress are reserved for, well, women.

Or take the example of South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, who faced death threats recently after she introduced the Protecting Women’s Private Spaces Act, which would prevent men from using women’s private, protected facilities on all federal property.

Despite these attempts at intimidation, conservatives owe it to the American people to keep their eye on the ball.

On Jan. 20, 2021—Joe Biden’s very first day in office—he signed Executive Order 13988, which changed the substance of more than 100 laws by requiring every federal agency to expand its prohibitions on sex discrimination to include “gender identity or expression” discrimination. And for the next four years, Democrats aggressively pushed gender-neutral bathrooms, locker rooms, and dorm rooms; advanced pronoun-related speech codes; and advocated for men to compete in women’s sports.

The predictable result of this radical social experiment was a raft of injuries sustained by teen girls and millions of hardworking Americans throwing their support behind Republicans this election.

Now, with control of the White House and majorities in both chambers of Congress, Republicans have a moral obligation to go on offense and roll back the Left’s transgender agenda. Protecting women on Capitol Hill is a fine place to start, but conservatives can’t stop until we’ve guaranteed the safety of our mothers, sisters, and daughters across the country.

Fixing Title IX should be at the top of the agenda. The simple, five-decades-old civil rights law meant to guarantee equality between men and women was abused by Biden’s Department of Education, which expanded the law to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and expression. Now, half the nation sits in a state of suspended animation as legal challenges to the new rule make their way through the courts.

Thankfully, the solution is simple. Come Jan. 20, 2025, President-elect Donald Trump can short circuit the legal process by revoking executive order 13988 and retiring it for good. After that, the White House can issue informal guidance to stakeholders in all federally funded fields impacted by gender identity, such as education and medicine. Hospitals, universities, medical clinics, and the like should all be immediately informed that sex once again means male and female—as it always has.

Once this warning shot is fired, the Trump administration must direct its attention to enforcement. First and foremost, that means launching investigations into schools and colleges that perpetuate sex discrimination by opening bathrooms, locker rooms, dorm rooms, and sports teams to men parading as women. These schools should lose their federal funding and be subject to increased taxation on their endowments. If necessary, Republicans should also consider revoking their accreditation.

Finally, Trump’s new Cabinet must take on the daunting task of agency rulemaking. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, the Food and Drug Administration, and several other federal agencies have issued rules on gender identity. One by one, these rules must be rescinded, and new rules must be launched.

These rules should indicate that “sex”—for purposes of all impacted federal laws outlawing sex discrimination—is to be interpreted as sex, not gender identity or transgender status. Moreover, they should clarify that the institutions that adhere to sex antidiscrimination law will not be in jeopardy of losing federal funding for enforcing those laws according to male and female definitions.

Congress, for its part, should consider ways to clarify that sex means male and female, not some infinite spectrum of options. Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall’s recent bill, the Defining Male and Female Act of 2024, is a good example of this sort of legislation.

Millions of American girls have spent the last four years in fear of sexual assaults in gender-neutral bathrooms, in frustration after losing out on scholarships and sports titles to men, and infuriated as they’ve been forced to use “preferred pronouns.” This never should have happened, but now that the Democrats’ social experiment has made it all the way to Capitol Hill, it is time for conservatives in Washington to wake up.

With the support of the American people—including millions of independent, moderate, and even Democratic women—Washington’s new leadership must abolish the Left’s radical gender ideology once and for all.

Kevin Roberts, Ph.D., is president of The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America and the author of Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America.

Sarah Parshall Perry is a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

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