Activists pressure Biden admin to update Title IX protections to include transgender athletes

A collection of women's rights and gender activist groups are pressuring the Biden administration to update its Title IX rules to permit transgender athletes to compete on sports teams that match their gender identity.

"We are writing to implore your administration to swiftly release a Title IX athletics rule that would ensure all students, including transgender, non-binary, and intersex students, can participate fully and equally in school sports," the groups wrote in an Aug. 10 letter.

"This is especially critical as LGBTQI+ students face pervasive discrimination in school, including sexual and verbal harassment, violence, and excessive discipline by faculty," they continued. "Compounding this is the barrage of vicious legislative attacks on LGBTQI+ students by state lawmakers across the country, including through recently passed state laws that ban transgender, non-binary, and intersex students from participating in sports."

Several more conservative states have moved to prohibit biological men from participating in women's sports. Moreover, polling suggests that a majority of the American public support such efforts.

The letter calls on the admin to explicitly affirm the right of transgender athletes "to participate in sports consistent with their gender identity" and to assert that statewide bans on the practice are "impermissible sex-based discrimination."

Previous Biden administration efforts to enforce its policies on transgender issues in education have met with legal pushback from Republican attorneys general, who scored a preliminary injunction against one such initiative in late July.