GOP governor signs executive order telling state not to enforce Biden’s Title IX rules

Idaho’s Republican Governor, Brad Little, signed an executive order Wednesday aimed at undermining the Biden administration’s expanded protections for LGBTQ+ students — and specifically transgender student-athletes — under Title IX.

As the Idaho Statesman reported, Little stood alongside anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, Idaho state Rep. Barbara Ehardt (R), and a group of student-athletes on the steps of the state Capitol building in Boise to announce the executive order, known as the “Defending Women’s Sports Act.”

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“These girls and women, and their families, dedicate their time, passion, and money to improve their skills and compete to win,” Little said in a statement following Wednesday’s signing. “They deserve a level playing field. That is why it is so important for us as a state to do all we can to protect and defend women’s sports.”

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The executive order directs the Idaho State Board of Education to “work with the Idaho State Department of Education to ensure public schools are properly following all of Idaho’s laws related to fairness in women’s sports.”

In March 2020, Little signed the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” into law, banning transgender women and girls in Idaho from competing in women’s and girls’ school sports. The statement from the governor’s office Wednesday touted Little as the first governor in the U.S. to sign such a bill.

The law has been blocked since August 2020, after the ACLU and other organizations filed a lawsuit challenging it on behalf of trans Boise State University runner Lindsay Hecox.

This week’s order took aim squarely at the Biden administration’s recent expansion of Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students. In April, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) unveiled new rules that interpret Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination “on the basis of sex” as including anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. The rules rely on the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that Title VII’s ban on sex-based discrimination in the workplace necessarily covers discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Little’s executive order characterized the Biden administration’s new protections for trans students as a “radical redefinition of gender” and asserted that the new rules would “jeopardize the great work we have done here in Idaho to protect our female students.”

The new rules, however, do not address transgender student athletes’ participation in school sports. In March, two unnamed administration sources told The Washington Post that Biden wanted to avoid the issue during an election year.

The new Title IX rules were set to go into effect on August 1, just ahead of the 2024–2025 school year. However, federal judges have temporarily blocked them in 26 states.

Little’s executive order directs the state’s board of education to “continue to update all public schools as the legal challenges to the new Title IX rules unfold” and “work to guarantee every female student in Idaho be provided equal opportunity in sports and school to the fullest extent as guaranteed to them under the original Title IX rules and Idaho law.”

As KTVB reported, the ACLU of Idaho responded to Wednesday’s executive order in a statement. “When our state government attempts to sidestep antidiscrimination laws through executive orders and injunctions, it creates unnecessary discrimination and harm for transgender women and girls,” it said. “The ACLU of Idaho will not let these civil liberties violations — using taxpayer money, no less — go unchallenged.”

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