White House plan to reform Title IX seeks to redefine gender
Mothers Cheryl Onderchain, Jaclyn Stapp, and Sara Owens joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss the potential changes and the impact they would have on women's sports.
Parents across the country are speaking out against President Biden's Title IX reform proposal, which could overhaul the definition of gender in schools.
The proposals solicited public comments and collected a record-breaking 184,000 comments from parents, with many voicing their opposition.
"So if these proposed changes get approved, what the government is basically doing is taking the worst of some of these policies that have been passed in local school districts and federalizing it, making it a federal mandate," said Cheryl Onderchain, a mother of three, Tuesday on "Fox & Friends First."
"It's comical we're even having this discussion. … We need to stop this in its tracks," the Loudoun County, Virginia resident told Carley Shimkus, saying school districts could lose federal funding if they don't open up girls' sports and female locker rooms to biological males.
Parents protesting in Loudoun County, Virginia in 2021
Biden's proposed changes for Title IX have stirred up such controversy that they've generated a record number of public comments from parents, many of whom are concerned about their children's safety in schools, and what the amendments will mean for women's sports.
The Biden administration proposed new regulations on the 50th anniversary of Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools, to expand the protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies recently released a study highlighting what they called the "Dirty Dozen Defects" of the draft. The "defects" the group said has fired parents up most are those that would require schools and colleges to allow biological males to compete in girls’ sports and use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their "gender identity."
University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas and Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines react after finishing tied for 5th in the 200 Freestyle finals at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships on March 18th, 2022 at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta Georgia. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Jaclyn Stapp, a working mother of four, said that Biden’s Title IX proposal is "so disheartening and very scary."
"As a female former athlete, my daughter is an athlete, a high schooler. This radical Title IX plan is just insane. Biden and the administration are really just overstepping their boundaries," Stapp said.
"This would kill women's sports," she added, arguing it's contradictory to the original intent of the Title IX law.
Sarah Owens, a South Carolina mother, blasted Biden’s proposal.
"Would you want your daughter to be slapped in the face for all the hard work she did in athletics because someone who isn't even a natural-born female has decided, ‘I want to be an athlete and I know I can beat these naturally born females?’" she argued.
Owens said if the Biden administration is "really for the people, [then they need to] listen to the people" on this issue.
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Biden’s Title IX proposals include changes to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' 2020 due process rules, which was the previous record holder for public comments. Her changes "weakened protections for survivors of sexual assault and diminished the promise of an education free from discrimination," the Biden White House charged.
Fox News' Cortney O'Brien contributed to this report.
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