The U.S. Department of Education (the Department) today announced that it is recognizing June as ‘Title IX Month’ in honor of the fifty-third anniversary of Title IX of the Educational Amendments (1972) being signed into law. June will now be dedicated to commemorating women and celebrating their struggle for, and achievement of, equal educational opportunity. Throughout the month, the Department will highlight actions taken to reverse the Biden Administration’s legacy of undermining Title IX and announce additional actions to protect women in line with the true purpose of Title IX.
The Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) also announced the first of its ‘Title IX Month’ initiatives today: Title IX directed investigations into the University of Wyoming and Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado for allegedly allowing males to join and live in female-only intimate and communal spaces.
OCR launched an investigation into the University of Wyoming after the university allowed a man to join a campus sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG). Members of the KKG sorority chapter sued the sorority itself for allowing a male into the group and permitting him to access living areas of the sorority house that are restricted to women. A school receiving federal funding that supports, sponsors, or promotes a sorority or fraternity, must meet its obligations under Title IX to protect its students from sex-based harassment and sexual assault, regardless of the sorority or fraternity’s policy. A sorority that admits male students is no longer a sorority by definition and thus loses the Title IX statutory exemption for a sorority’s single-sex membership practices.
The Department also notified the Superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) that it is initiating a Title IX investigation into the district for its policy that students will be “assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share a student’s ‘gender identity,’” thus removing the safeguard of single-sex overnight accommodations. This comes amid several disturbing reports, including that parents of an 11-year-old girl in the district discovered their daughter would have had to share a bed with a male student on an overnight school trip without being notified by the school. The district allegedly misleads parents by informing them that girls and boys will be separated for overnight accommodations without divulging that its definition of “girl” includes boys who claim a female identity.
“The Department is recognizing June as ‘Title IX Month’ to honor women’s hard-earned civil rights and demonstrate the Trump Administration’s unwavering commitment to restoring them to the fullest extent of the law. Title IX provides women protections on the basis of sex in all educational activities, which include their rights to equal opportunity in sports and sex-segregated intimate spaces, including sororities and living accommodations,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “This Administration will fight on every front to protect women’s and girls’ sports, intimate spaces, dormitories and living quarters, and fraternal and panhellenic organizations.”
Background:
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. This includes female students’ rights to sex-segregated intimate spaces and single-sex membership in sororities.
The U.S. Department of Education will post updates about ‘Title IX Month’ on its social media pages throughout June.