Texas Governor Greg Abbott dispatched a letter to public universities and community colleges in the Lone Star State telling administrators to ignore the Biden administration's radical rewrite of Title IX that guts the law's intended protections for female athletes and women's sports.
Reiterating that "Texas will not comply" with President Biden's rule substituting subjective "gender" for biological "sex," Abbott says the new rule "contradicts the original purpose and spirit of the law to support the advancement of women."
"Last week, I instructed the Texas Education Agency to ignore President Biden’s illegal dictate of Title IX," Abbott writes. "Today, I am instructing every public college and university in the State of Texas to do the same."
Speaking to the foundation of Title IX as it was originally written, Abbott reminds that it "was based on the fundamental premise that there are only two sexes—male and female. President Biden wants to force every school across the country to treat boys and men as if they were girls and women and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity, exceeding his authority as President in order to impose a leftist belief on the next generation."
"I signed laws to ensure the safety of our students on campus and provide a process for adjudicating reports of sexual harassment and sexual assault with adequate due process for all parties involved, as well as laws to protect the integrity of women’s sports by prohibiting men from competing against female athletes—and I will not let President Biden erase the advancements Texas has made," Abbott pledges in his letter.
Those laws referenced by Abbott include the "Save Women's Sports Act" which banned biological males from playing against female athletes at public universities and colleges and a companion bill that did the same for public high school athletics.
"Texas will stand up not only to President Biden’s rewrite of Title IX, but also his plans to destroy the legacy of women’s collegiate sports," declared Abbott. "Texas will fight to protect those laws, to protect Texas women, and to deny the President’s abuse of authority."