A group of 22 GOP House leaders sent a letter on Thursday to Biden Administration Education Department Secretary Miguel Cardona opposing the plan to change the definition of Title IX to include gender identity.
The Daily Caller first shared the report regarding the letter led by Oklahoma Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin.
“This change in definition will negate the very foundation on which this protection is based,” Mullin said in a statement to the Daily Caller. “There will be no level playing field as 50 years of history and progress are erased. Since its introduction, there has been a significant increase in the number of women who participate in sports and go on to pursue them at a collegiate level. It’s a shame the president’s leftist agenda is willing to compromise this,” he added.
The letter urged Cardona to stop biological males from being eligible to compete in women’s sports at the collegiate level.
“When women are forced to compete against biological males, the level playing field that Title IX created is obsolete,” the Republican House members wrote.
“In one year, 275 high school boys ran faster times than the lifetime best of World Champion sprinter Allyson Felix. Earlier this year, Lia Thomas, University of Pennsylvania swimmer and biological male, won the NCAA D1 500-meter National Championship,” the letter added. “Your proposed changes to the Title IX rule would make this the norm and would fundamentally erode the very protections it was designed to provide.”
The communication follows a similar letter sent by House Republicans in March to National Collegiate Athletic Association President Mark Emmert that urged the NCAA to prohibit biological males from competing in women’s athletics.
“In recent years, the NCAA has taken numerous steps to promote women’s sports. Yet, all these measures are worthless if you are unwilling to ensure a level playing field for biological women,” the group of GOP leaders wrote.
Several states have recently passed laws to ban biological males from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. Some, like South Dakota’s recent law, have included sports at the college level. The legislation could come into legal disputes in connection with the Education Department’s effort to redefine gender to include gender identity.
South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem addressed the transgender controversy in a January statement from her office that later led to signing the state’s Women’s Fairness in Sports bill in February.
“One way a young girl exercises her liberty is on the fields and in the gyms of South Dakota: playing basketball, swimming competitively, and running track, just to name a few popular sports here in the Mount Rushmore State,” the governor said in the statement.
“It is in playing sports that a young girl can learn how to achieve and how to succeed. But some in our society want to take those opportunities to succeed away from our young women. Some schools and organizations across the country have sought to take away their freedom to achieve by changing the rules of the games,” she added.