The US Department of Education (ED) will crack down on Virginia and Oregon for defying President Donald Trump’s executive order protecting women’s sports from transgender athletes.
The ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened an investigation into the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) after it received a complaint from the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) that males were competing in women’s sports, specifically at the high school level.
The complaint stated that multiple high-school aged female athletes in Oregon lost “medal awards, placements, and other competitive opportunities” to biological males and suffered “heightened stress, intimidation, and emotional distress” due to competing against men.
That’s not all. AFPI’s complaint stated that the Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA) has policies that blatantly violate Title IX by allowing students to participate in athletics based on their “gender identity” rather than their biological sex
“Oregon appears to have missed the message: The Trump Administration will not allow educational institutions that receive federal funds to continue trampling upon women’s rights,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. “If Oregon is permitting males to compete in women’s sports, it is allowing these males to steal the accolades and opportunities that female competitors have rightfully earned through hard work and grit, while callously disregarding women’s and girls’ safety, dignity, and privacy. Title IX does not permit that shameful arrangement, and we will not tolerate it.”
In Virginia, the OCR concluded that five school districts in the northern part of the state outside Washington, D.C. were violating Title IX.
The investigation began in February based on complaints alleging that Alexandria City Public Schools, Arlington Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, Loudoun County Public Schools, and Prince William County Public Schools were allowing transgender students to use women’s facilities, among other things.
“Although this type of behavior was tolerated by the previous Administration, it’s time for Northern Virginia’s experiment with radical gender ideology and unlawful discrimination to come to an end. OCR’s investigation definitively shows that these five Virginia school districts have been trampling on the rights of students in the service of an extreme political ideology,” Trainor said. “The Trump Administration will not sacrifice the safety, dignity, and innocence of America’s young women and girls at the altar of an anti-scientific illiberalism.”