Changes to Title IX, The Department of Education civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex–are set to take effect this month. The new rules set by the Biden administration are designed to extend protections on sex-based bias against LGBTQ students. But in a politically-charged debate, opponents of the changes say they’ll deal a devastating blow to girls and women's sports.
Dozens of female athletes, coaches and advocates for women’s sports stopped at a Scottsdale restaurant in June to deliver a message as part of a nationwide bus junket.
Christy Narsi heads the Arizona chapter of Our Bodies Our Sports, the group responsible for what’s called “The Take Back Title IX” tour.“
"(We’re) working together to keep women’s sports female and take back and protect the landmark sex equality act, Title IX," Narsi said.
The tour has taken the group of women around the country to speak out about Title IX changes by the Biden administration that were scheduled to go into effect this month.
Marshi Smith is a former all-American and NCAA champion swimmer at the University of Arizona.
“The original intent of Title IX is an anti-discrimination law to ensure equal opportunities for females," Smith said.
Smith and others claim the new regulations strip away all sex-based protections in education and undermine women’s rights by requiring schools and other institutions to allow athletes to self-identify as whatever gender they want.
“A couple of years ago, I witnessed a male athlete, Lia Thomas, standing on the same championship podium that I once stood back in 2005 and to be quite frankly, I was devastated," Smith said.
Thomas is the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA national championship, having captured the 500-yard freestyle event in 2022. She has since been barred from international events by World Aquatics, which ruled females cannot compete if they’ve already gone through male puberty.
Thomas lost an appeal to swim in the Olympics, but Smith and others believe it won’t stop transgender athletes from competing in the future.
“I think it’s pretty simple. Women and girls deserve respect, fair treatment and fair competition. That should not be a partisan statement," Smith said.
The Our Bodies Our Sports coalition says if the new Biden administration rules are allowed to take effect, schools and other institutions would have no choice but to accept more transgender athletes.
But Cathryn Oakley with the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that advocates for LGBQT rights, says that’s simply false.
“No one is proposing that,” Oakley said. “This is a rule that is applying to all kinds of discrimination in education. It is not explicitly addressing sports.”
Oakley says the administration hasn’t finalized Title IX regs for sports yet and believes the “Take Back” movement is politically motivated, with backing from conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom, who oppose the expansion of LGBTQ rights.
“The folks who have promulgated it and doing the fear mongering have all been part of this coalition of anti-LGBT groups–they’re not here because they care about women’s sports," Oakley said.
Oakley accuses the "Take Back Title IX" movement of being disingenuous about their motives.
“They’ve found that they’ve been able to mislead people and hype people up with the fear around what it means for trans kids to be able to participate in sports," Oakley said.
New federal protections for transgender students at U.S. schools and colleges launched this month, but remain in limbo. Most Republican-led states have challenged it in court, which has temporarily blocked enforcement in about 22 states.
But not Arizona. Instead, dozens of schools in the state — led by the Florida conservative group Moms for Liberty — sued on their own, meaning some districts cannot enforce it yet either.
The U.S. Department of Education did not respond to interview requests for this story.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Christy Narsi's name.
