Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders signed an executive order that goes against the Biden administration’s new changes to Title IX which classifies discrimination based on gender identity as sex discrimination.
Arkansas Gov Sarah Sanders signs executive order in response to Biden's Title IX changes https://t.co/jGJdflT6an
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The new rules would allow locker rooms and bathrooms to be used based on gender identity rather than biological gender, as it prohibits schools from treating people differently based on their gender.
While the changes added protections for transgender athletes, Sanders’ executive order says, “Educational institutions of Arkansas will continue to enforce state law guaranteeing the right of students to maintain their privacy. “
Maintaining that “students must not be forced to shower or undress with” people of the opposite gender, the order added, “Female students must not be denied equal athletic opportunities or forced to risk their safety by having biological males placed into female-designated sports leagues.”
Sanders tore apart the overhaul to Title IX on Thursday, calling it an “attack on common sense.”
Highlighting how the new rules do not base gender on the “commonly understood biological differences between men and women,” she stated, “It’s based on how a person feels or their gender identity. To put it another way, Biden thinks anybody can be a woman just because they say so. As a woman, the mother of a daughter and our state’s first chief executive to give birth … I can’t think of anything more offensive or dismissive of the very real, very scientific traits that all women share and that no man does.”
“This issue goes far beyond a single locker room or a missed scholarship. The truth is important. Biology is important. The differences between men and women are important,” she continued, going on to vow not to allow Biden “erase our existence as women.”
Sanders’ executive order comes after six states, led by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, sued the Department of Education due to the Title IX overhaul this week.
In a statement accompanying the lawsuit, Skrmetti said, “The U.S. Department of Education has no authority to let boys into girls’ locker rooms. In the decades since its adoption, Title IX has been universally understood to protect the privacy and safety of women in private spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms.”
