On April 6, the Biden administration shared confusion-inducing guidance on Title IX surrounding trans youth participation in sports. Essentially, the administration announced that blanket bans on trans athletes’ participation in sports would violate Title IX, but that schools could nonetheless ban students “based on a set of sex-related criteria unique to their community,” per the Hill – meaning they could still ban trans students from participation.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) took to Twitter to respond to the move. “Absolutely no reason for the Biden admin to do this. It is indefensible and embarrassing,” AOC tweeted. “The admin can still walk this back, and they should. It’s a disgrace.” She further echoed concerns from trans advocates, who, as reported by Buzzfeed’s Lil Kalish, have warned that “while this guidance may have been well-intentioned, it does not do enough to ensure protections for transgender students seeking to participate in school sports, particularly as 20 states have imposed bans on trans athletes.”
According to NPR, the new guidance from the Biden administration would make those state-level bans illegal; a “senior level official” told the Hill that “disapproval of transgender students, or a desire to harm a particular student would not qualify as important educational objectives.” But legal experts like Lambda Legal are “concerned about whether the proposed rule can properly eliminate the discrimination that transgender students experience due to the pervasive bias and ignorance about who they are,” as the organization said in a statement.
“While conservatives cite a wave of trans athletes coming to take over professional sports,” reports Quispe Lopez of them, “trans folks make up less than 0.002% of the 50,000 athletes that have competed in the Paralympics and Olympics since 2004, according to Athlete Ally.”
For Ocasio-Cortez’s part, her criticism comes amid a rightward turn from the Biden admin (under a new chief of staff) and her attempts to publicly make nice with the broader Democratic coalition. A recent profile of Ocasio-Cortez in Politico highlighted her recent efforts to coalition-build after her first years in Congress, when the media obsessed over her interactions with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others. The profile also noted her relationship with younger progressives in the House like Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL).
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