Brad Little on the steps of the Idaho Capitol on August 28. Photo: Screenshot / KTVB
Idaho Republican Governor Brad Little signed an executive order on Wednesday aimed at undermining the Biden administration’s expanded protections for LGBTQ+ students – and particularly transgender student-athletes – under Title IX.
As Idaho Statesman Little reportedly stood on the steps of the Capitol in Boise alongside anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, Republican Idaho State Rep. Barbara Ehardt and a group of student-athletes to announce the executive order, known as the Defending Women’s Sports Act.
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“These girls and women and their families dedicate their time, passion and money to improving their skills and competing to win,” Little said in a statement after the signing on Wednesday. “They deserve a level playing field. That’s why it’s so important for us as a state to do everything we can to protect and defend women’s sports.”
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The order directs the Idaho State Board of Education to “work with the Idaho State Department of Education to ensure that public schools properly comply with all Idaho laws relating to fairness in women’s sports.”
In March 2020, Little signed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which bans transgender women and girls in Idaho from participating in women’s and girls’ school sports. The statement from the governor’s office on Wednesday called Little the first governor in the U.S. to sign such a law.
The law has been blocked since August 2020 after the ACLU and other organizations filed a lawsuit against it on behalf of transgender runner Lindsay Hecox of Boise State University.
This week’s order was aimed directly at the Biden administration’s recent expansion of Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students. In April, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) unveiled new rules that interpret Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination “on the basis of sex” to include anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. The rules are based on the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton Countywhich found that the prohibition of sex discrimination in the workplace contained in Title VII necessarily includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
In Little’s executive order, he called the Biden administration’s new protections for transgender students a “radical redefinition of gender” and claimed the new rules would “jeopardize the great work we have done here in Idaho to protect our female students.”
However, the new rules do not regulate the participation of transgender student athletes in school sports. In March, two unnamed administration sources said: The Washington Post that Biden wanted to avoid the issue in an election year.
The new Title IX rules were scheduled to take effect on August 1, immediately before the 2024-2025 school year. However, federal judges have temporarily blocked them in 26 states..
Little’s executive order directs the state Department of Education to “continue to keep all public schools informed of the legal challenges posed by the new Title IX rules” and “work to provide all Idaho students with the greatest possible equal opportunity in athletics and academics, as they are entitled to under the original Title IX rules and Idaho law.”
As KTVB reported, the ACLU of Idaho responded to Wednesday’s order in a statement. “When our state government attempts to circumvent anti-discrimination laws through executive orders and injunctions, it results in unnecessary discrimination and harm to transgender women and girls,” it said. “The ACLU of Idaho will not let these civil rights violations – and taxpayer dollars at that – go unpunished.”
