Arizona Republicans are applauding a recent court decision that helps to protect females.
Late last week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky dealt a significant blow to a Final Rule from the Biden administration on Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The court ruled that “the Final Rule and its corresponding regulations exceed the Department’s authority under Title IX, violate the Constitution, and are the result of arbitrary and capricious agency action.”
According to the press release issued by the Arizona Senate Republicans, this Biden administration rule “required schools to allow boys and men in girls’ and women’s private spaces like restrooms and locker rooms, on their female-only sports teams, and to disregard other sex-based protections created for the safety, security, and well-being of biological females within federal law.”
🚨FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Senate Republicans Applaud Tennessee Attorney General for Defending Arizona Women, Girls Against Biden's Radical Title IX Rule
In a written statement, Senate President Warren Petersen said, “We are grateful for the conservative attorneys general nationwide who are working tirelessly to protect women and girls from bigger, stronger boys and men, while the radical Left continues to ignore not only science, but common sense. Women and girls are fighting an uphill battle as progressives try to undo the protections created for them, including Arizona’s Save Women’s Sports Act, which the Republican-led Arizona Legislature is currently litigating while Arizona’s own Attorney General refuses to do so.”
Senator Sine Kerr added, “This is a big victory for the women and girls who’ve had athletic and educational opportunities stripped from them at the hands of biological males posing as females, but there is still much more work to be done. While Governor Hobbs vetoed last year the Arizona Women’s Bill of Rights, Senate Republicans have vowed to continue to push legislation that safeguards women and girls on the playing field, in their bathrooms, their locker rooms, and anywhere else carved out specifically for them. Our daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and neighbors deserve to feel safe and supported, and it is our duty as elected officials to ensure their protection.”
After receiving the news of the court order, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, who led the coalition of attorneys general against the new rule on Title IX, said, “This is a huge win for Tennessee, for common sense, and for women and girls across America. The court’s ruling is yet another repudiation of the Biden administration’s relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology through unconstitutional and illegal rulemaking. Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office.”
Tennessee has successfully defended Title IX, and the country, from the Biden Admin’s radical and unlawful rewrite!
"The court's ruling is yet another repudiation of the Biden administration's relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology through unconstitutional and… pic.twitter.com/AYCoKVIFye
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, one of the attorneys general in the coalition also weighed in, saying, “I’m proud to have successfully defended Title IX from the federal government’s power grab that threatened to upend half a century of landmark protections for women and punish States for following their own laws.”
🚨BREAKING: I’m pleased to announce that, at the urging of Virginia and 5 other States, a federal court has vacated the Biden Administration’s unlawful Title IX rewrite on a NATIONWIDE basis.
All of America is now safe from Biden’s attempt to undermine half a century of…
Petersen continues to use his office as the leader of Senate Republicans to help stand in the gap for Arizona in major state and federal legal fights in the absence of Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes. He promises more intervention into legal matters in 2025 as legislative Republicans work toward protecting their state from government overreach and special interests that attempt to take Arizona in radical directions.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
When President-elect Donald Trump named Linda McMahon as the next secretary of Education, he said McMahon “will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families” via a statement issued on Truth Social.
During Trump’s first term, McMahon led the Small Business Administration (SBA), where she favored pragmatic pro-growth policies that emphasized merit-based job opportunities and reducing government intervention in business practices with a nod towards no forced diversity, equity and inclusion measures.
With the selection of McMahon as education secretary, states should demand this administration make true educational freedom attainable, protect our female athletes by returning “girls only” to their sports teams and hold our public schools accountable against child predators.
States like Arizona eagerly await this changing of the guard to truly help protect women. While an enraged Michelle Obama spewed hate-filled propaganda in the last few weeks leading up to the November election by suggesting “women will become collateral damage” if Trump was to return to the White House, thankfully, voters did not buy that.
McMahon understands the importance of bringing education back to the states where it belongs and into the hands of parents, not government bureaucrats relying on zip codes to fill school buildings. While McMahon led the America First Works (AFW), the organization’s main goal was to achieve universal school choice across the country. Over the last several years, the school-choice movement has seen a dozen states achieve this status, but it cannot stop there. McMahon’s leadership role at the helm of AFW illustrates that she adamantly supports competition among our schools, including charter schools, private-school tuition scholarships, education savings accounts and homeschooling. Above all, McMahon believes supporting all educational options will lead to better outcomes for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds.
McMahon’s appointment couldn’t have come at a better time. Future Secretary McMahon could halt the Biden administration’s attack on women by rolling back its faulty rulemaking that was forcing publicly funded schools to allow transgender men to participate in women’s only sports by threatening to defund their Title IX funding if they refused. Hopefully, this war on women can end on Trump’s first day back in the White House. Women’s only sports face near extinction if we don’t prohibit biological men from competing in women’s sports. It is truly unfair for biological girls to have to compete with biological males in sports. Not only do males have bigger muscles than females, but males have the advantage of testosterone that no amount of training or talent can enable biological female athletes to overcome.
Safety in our sports is not the only area this next administration needs to lead. All children should feel safe on their school’s campus. Sexual abuse cases in our public schools continue to generate headlines. Even though teachers and school-district employees are mandatory reporters, they don’t always appropriately record allegations of sexual abuse.
The Trump administration needs to step up in protecting the safety of our kids by requiring all public-school districts and charter-school districts to record all sexual abuse allegations and share these written reports with its state education department. The Department of Education should centrally house a database documenting sexual abuse allegations in our schools so that when district and charter schools are conducting background checks on future employees, they can consult this much needed resource. The teachers’ unions will push back against this proposal. We should all agree, all students should be free from predators, especially in their individual learning environments. Each year public schools report their campuses’ crime data to the Office of Civil Rights under the Department of Education. Schools should be committed to keeping our kids safe and want to be held accountable by reporting any sexual abuse allegations.
Shawnna Bolick is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and has served in the Arizona Legislature since 2019. She served four years in the Arizona House until 2022. In July 2023, she was appointed to the State Senate, District 2, to fill a vacancy. Bolick has signed onto an amicus brief supporting both Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act and Arizona’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. She has sponsored or cosponsored legislation pertaining to weeding out sexual predators in our public schools.
By now, my story is pretty well-known. I (Riley Gaines) swam against Lia Thomas (who had previously competed on Penn’s men’s team before switching to the women’s team) in the spring of 2022, and we tied for fifth place. Officials told me Thomas needed to hold the trophy for “photo purposes” and that they would mail me mine. What a degrading way to finish my swimming career.
Thomas made headlines early this year after suing World Aquatics (and losing) in hopes to compete as a woman in the 2024 Paris Olympics. World Aquatics, understanding that testosterone suppression doesn’t eliminate male athletic advantage, prohibits individuals who have gone through male puberty from competing in women’s events.
If Thomas would have been allowed to compete as a woman, it’s very possible that the women’s Olympics might have had a different outcome. Thomas had the fastest time in the nation in the women’s 500 freestyle in 2022. And, as we’ve seen in various sports across the nation and the world, over 500 medals, honors, and trophies meant for women have gone to males who identify as such. This is demeaning and discouraging at best.
That’s exactly what Title IX protects against. Under the Title IX Congress passed 52 years ago, women were promised equal opportunities, including in athletics, in an educational program (like high school and college) that accepts federal money, even indirectly.
But radical and illegal interpretations of Title IX say it doesn’t protect women, but rather subordinates women to males who identify as women. The Biden-Harris administration released a controversial revision in April (in effect as of August 1), unilaterally rewriting the landmark sex equality law. This is a dangerous game to play. Several states have challenged the law and preserved single-sex sports in their states. Arizona is not one of them, thanks to Democrats in charge deciding to support the Biden-Harris regime.
Not only did Arizona leaders fail to sue, but Congress had a chance to undo the Biden-Harris Title IX revisions. A Congressional Review Act (CRA) joint resolution was introduced and voted on by the House to overturn this rewrite, but the Senate failed to act.
U.S. Congressman Ruben Gallego (AZ-3), now running for a hotly-contested Senate seat in Arizona, was one of 205 Democratic members of Congress who voted not to protect women’s sports, signaling his disdain for the integrity of women’s spaces.
As both of us have said before, the allowance of men in women’s sports is discrimination at the highest level. I (Sami) played women’s disc golf professionally since 2012 and recently stepped down so that I could join the fight for women’s rights.
This is truly one of the top civil rights issues of our time, and so much is at stake.
It’s not just sports that are affected, either. Across the country, we’ve seen males dominate women’s prisons, sororities, locker rooms, and other intimate spaces. This is nothing less than the attempted erasure of women.
This year, the Arizona legislature passed the “Arizona Women’s Bill of Rights” to codify common sense definitions of sex-based terms, such as “woman,” “man,” “female,” and “male.” Sadly, it was vetoed by Governor Katie Hobbs.
Time and time again, elected officials on the federal and state levels have signaled that they do not stand with women. And we’ve had enough.
That’s why I created the Riley Gaines Stand With Women Scorecardwith Independent Women’s Voice. This first-of-its-kind resource scores every candidate for federal office on whether they stand with women and promise “to uphold legislation that preserves female opportunities and private spaces.”
Senate Candidate Kari Lake, for instance, signed the Stand With Women Commitment, making her the only Arizona Senate candidate to be Riley Gaines-Approved.
As former athletes, we desperately hope the next generation of girls have the same opportunities we had to compete and win, with privacy and safety in mind. The integrity of women’s spaces hangs in the balance. Do your leaders stand with women? Visit the scorecard to find out.
Riley Gaines is an ambassador with Independent Women’s Voice and a former 12x All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky. She is the host of “Gaines for Girls” on OutKick and author of Swimming Against the Current: Fighting for Common Sense in a World That’s Lost its Mind. Sami Keddington is the Chandler, Arizona, Chapter leader of Independent Women’s Network and a former professional disc golfer.
Positive education experiences from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s are dwindling away. Today, students are facing unprecedented onslaughts of inappropriate attention and criminal behaviors at the hands of district representatives and staff members. Public schools are no longer safe for children. These government indoctrination camps now exist to create and perpetuate cycles of crises while producing a victimized citizenry that’s controlled by fear.
Child abuse is increasing at alarming rates as a growing number of educators and administrators commit atrocious acts against their students. These incidents range from emotional to psychological to illicit sexual encounters. In some cases, predators are impregnated by their victims and vice versa. If that’s not enough, Biden’s new Title IX regulations effectively remove privacy and safety barriers between males and females on school campuses.
According to a report from The Federalist, one in 10 students are sexually abused by teachers. These findings agree with a 2017 case study from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service that revealed 10% of K-12 students will fall prey to sexual impropriety by a school employee. Furthermore, CBSNews quoted an estimate from the Department of Education (DOE) that said “12% of all public school students in the United States experience sexual misconduct by the time they graduate high school.”
The Federalist declared:
“Every day millions of parents put their children under the care of public school teachers, administrators, and support staff. Their trust, however, is frequently broken by predators…in what appears to be the largest ongoing sexual abuse scandal in our nation’s history. Given the roughly 50 million students in U.S. K-12 schools each year, the number of students who have been victims of sexual misconduct by school employees is probably in the millions each decade…For a variety of reasons…elected or appointed officials, along with unions or lobbying groups…have fought to keep the truth hidden from the public.”
For clarification: Out of 50 million children enrolled in public schools each year—between five and six million are sexually abused by a teacher or district staff member! Unfortunately, these statistics most likely represent a mere fraction of sex crimes that are never reported or investigated.
According to CBS, Redlands Unified School District (RUSD) paid out over $45 million to settle multiple cases of child sexual abuse dating back to the late 1990s. The report said the district repeatedly failed to take action against predators on their payroll, opting instead to relocate these criminals to different schools or nearby districts. The CBS documentary “Pledge of Silence” further exposed RUSD’s cover up of rape and sexual abuse that occurred between 1999 and 2022.
The DOE is still investigating hundreds of sex crimes and Title IX violations that allegedly occurred on school campuses across the nation.
District policies and school libraries are breeding grounds for sexual grooming and child abuse. Parents Defending Education compiled a list of U.S. school districts that actively implement “transgender support plans” and similar gender-based practices. These programs serve as de facto policies and guidelines that enable government employees to engage minors in intimate conversations without parental knowledge or consent. Many students also have access to pornographic reading materials during educational hours.
Mesa Public Schools (MPS) Board President Marcie Hutchison and Superintendent Andi Fourlis have overseen an unknown number of social gender transitions via the district’s secretive transgender support plan. The plan—which was implemented in 2015 and includes a student’s choice of bathrooms—resulted in a recently dismissed lawsuit. Furthermore, a general search of the MPS virtual library reveals numerous LGBT-themed texts including:
Under the leadership of Superintendent Scott Menzel and a radical majority governing board, Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) supplies students with novels that depict young people as victims of rape, incest, sex trafficking, and graphic homosexual activities. The reality of these situations is irrelevant to the fact that parents/guardians have the authority to decide at what age or maturity level their children are introduced to these topics. The existence of such nasty books in K-12 schools draws attention to the motives of district officials who enable and entertain discussions about multiple sexuality disorders, sodomy, and prostitution among children.
The screenshot below features several titles with an “adult” interest level that appear available on SUSD’s virtual library page.
These examples don’t scratch the surface of what’s being forced on children through public education. We are witnessing a federally funded, trauma-infused, demoralization of the next generation. Not nearly enough parents are outraged by this tragedy. Not nearly enough students have been pulled from government indoctrination camps, though some promising trends are starting to emerge.
According to the Heritage Foundation’s “State Report Card,” Arizona ranks #1 for education choice and #2 overall in education freedom. The Washington Post said, “ESAs provide an average of $7,143 for parents of children leaving traditional public schools…Arizona spends about $13,500 per public school student; if everyone opted for ESAs, the state would save money.”
As leftist politicians work hard to demonize and destroy parents’ choice, it’s not recommended that families solely rely on ESAs. There may be more suitable and secure funding alternatives that can withstand volatile election cycles. Any amount of time spent researching this topic will be worthwhile. Still, as the door of opportunity stands wide open, we should do everything we can to intervene in the lives of our youngest, most vulnerable, and innocent members of society.
Parents: it’s not only your right, but also your responsibility to proactively defend your kids against the evil that’s manifesting in our education system. Use your authority to seize control of your child’s mental and physical health by removing them from dangerous, predator-infested public schools. You won’t regret the sacrifices you make to spare your sons and daughters from becoming the prey of wolves in teachers’ clothes.
Tiffany is the Founder of Restore Parental Rights in Education, a grassroots advocate for families, educators, and school board members. For nearly two decades, Tiffany’s creative writing pursuits have surpassed most interests as she continues to contribute to her blogBigviewsmallwindow.com. She encourages everyday citizens to take an active role in defending and preserving American values for future generations.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is advising Arizona’s school districts and charter schools to consult legal counsel regarding implementation of the controversial Title IX changes.
The changes to Title IX center on the redefining of the term “sex” to include “gender identity.” In effect, schools would be required to permit access to gendered programs, activities, or spaces on the basis of gender identity rather than biological sex, such as sports teams, locker rooms, and bathrooms. The U.S. Department of Education (ED) released the final Title IX rules outlining this change in April.
In ED’s justification for expanding the concept of “sex” to include “gender identity,” the agency declared that basing exclusion on biological sex amounted to sex discrimination.
“For more than 50 years, Title IX has promised an equal opportunity to learn and thrive in our nation’s schools free from sex discrimination,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “These final regulations build on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation’s students can access schools that are safe, welcoming, and respect their rights.”
These new rules take effect on Aug. 1.
In a press release on Monday, Horne announced that he’d advised legal counsel to educational institutions through letters disseminated to all districts and charters. Horne emphasized that, though all schools had the choice to implement the updated Title IX regulations, there were pending legal challenges that may result in students suffering damages.
“This is your choice, but you may wish to delay implementing the new regulations until the legal situation is clarified. If the regulations are implemented and then later overruled by the courts, students may suffer damages in the meantime,” said Horne. “This is not legal advice. The Arizona Attorney General may disagree […] We are a local control state, and it will be up to districts and charters to determine how to proceed in this situation. You need to consult with your lawyer. I am only providing information I think might be useful.”
Indeed, a federal court in Louisiana ruled against the new regulations last month. The judge determined that the new federal rules amounted to federal overreach, calling ED’s rulemaking “arbitrary and capricious,” and signaling concern for the rules’ threat to protected constitutional speech.
Some districts have already opposed the changes.
Dysart Unified School District’s governing board voted to reject the new Title IX rules earlier this month. The district declared that ED’s changes to Title IX were contradictory to the existing, plain language of the rules.
Horne noted in Monday’s press release that the new Title IX rules could “significantly injure public education” by prompting parents to flee the system.
“In the past I’ve been asked by districts, as a policy matter, about their consideration of rules, permitting biological boys who have male genitalia being allowed in girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers,” said Horne. “My response was that there should be unisex bathrooms available, and if there was no room for them, the faculty bathroom should be used for that purpose. That would preserve the dignity of biological boys who identify as girls. But if they were allowed in girls’ facilities, I thought parents might well remove the girls from the school and send them to another district, Charter School, or private school. So, this rule could significantly injure public education.”
26 states have put forth legal challenges to the Title IX changes, with some awarded injunctions: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
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