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“If ‘on the basis of sex’ included ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity,’ as Defendants envision, Title IX and its regulations would be nonsensical. Title IX expressly allows sex distinctions and sometimes even requires them to promote equal opportunity.”
– JUDGE MATTHEW KACSMARYK
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas last week ruled that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) does not require doctors to perform sex changes or prescribe gender transition drugs because the definition of sex under Title IX does not apply to sexual orientation and gender identity.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued the ruling last week. The ruling centered on whether Title IX’s definition of “sex” includes sexual orientation and gender identity.
Title IX was passed in 1972 as an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination in education based on sex; for nearly 50 years, it was defined and unquestionably accepted as meaning discrimination against women and girls.
In addition to trying to change the intent and definitions of Title IX itself, the Biden administration has interpreted Section 1557 of the ACA, which bars discrimination on the basis of Title IX, to mean that “sex” includes sexual orientation and gender identity, which would require doctors to treat patients based on their gender identity.
The administration has sought to apply the standard laid out in the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton decision, which specifically stated that Title VII prohibits an employer from firing employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, to Title IX.
Kacsmaryk wrote that the reasoning could not be applied to Title IX, and as such, the law cannot be used to force healthcare providers to provide sex-change hormone treatments and surgeries against their religious beliefs.
“Title IX presumes sexual dimorphism in section after section, requiring equal treatment for each ‘sex,’” Kacsmaryk ruled. “And Courts have long interpreted Title IX to prohibit federally funded education programs from treating men better than women.”
He continued, “As written and commonly construed, Title IX operates in binary terms — male and female – when it references ‘on the basis of sex.’”
The judge wrote that Title IX refers to “the other sex,” before explaining,
“If ‘on the basis of sex’ included ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity,’ as Defendants envision, Title IX and its regulations would be nonsensical. Title IX expressly allows sex distinctions and sometimes even requires them to promote equal opportunity…Defendants’ theory actively ‘undermine[s] one of [Title IX’s] major achievements, giving young women an equal opportunity to participate in sports.
He went on to rule,
“The Defendants’ reinterpretation of Title IX through the Notification imperils the very opportunities for women Title IX was designed to promote and protect—categorically forcing biological women to compete against biological men.”
Stephen Miller, president of America First Legal, which represented the plaintiffs, celebrated the ruling as a critical victory for the rule of law and one that reigns in an increasingly imperialistic executive branch, stating,
“Forcing doctors to treat boys as girls and women as men is sheer anti-science lunacy. If the medicine is not safe from woke ideology then nothing and no one is safe. There is a war on fact, reason, truth, and science in America — and we are proud to have dealt a severe blow to those who would destroy science, medicine, and public health in their warped pursuit of total ideological conquest. This decision affirms that Biden broke the law by ordering doctors to substitute superstition for biology and to conduct barbaric experiments on children including chemical castration and permanent sterilization.”
Biology says that there are two sexes of humans, that those sexes are different, and that sex cannot be changed. Gender ideology says there are innumerable genders and gender is fluid. Gender theory supporters insist that if a person identifies as one gender, then they are that gender, no scientific evidence necessary, unless they later decide they are a different gender.
While gender theory proponents may insist that one can contort the world’s scientific laws to suit their feelings, reality remains. A person born male will have medical needs specific to males and females will have medical needs specific to females. No matter gender theorists’ insistence that mankind must deny what is visibly plain to all, healthcare professionals cannot treat a female as a male, or else they will cause harm to her, and vice versa.
The court’s decision respects the intent of Title IX and refuses to allow the administration to take over the role of Congress, or to try to take up that role through the courts. The Supreme Court explicitly stated that the Bostock decision only applied to Title VII, yet the Biden administration keeps trying to broadly apply it to various other parts of U.S. law, particularly Title IX.
The administration’s commitment to the LGBT lobby has already denied women and girls the equal opportunities afforded by Title IX; placed them in dangerous situations by allowing biological males to use women’s restrooms, locker rooms, showers, and battered women’s shelters; placed doctors in untenable situations; and even endangered the lives and health of transgender people by demanding that doctors unquestioningly treat them as their gender identity.
Mark 10:6-8 says,
“But from the beginning of creation, God MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; so they are no longer two, but one flesh.”
Jesus was answering questions from the Pharisees about divorce, but His words explain that from the beginning of the world, God created His image-bearers as male and female. There are only two genders. God creates each person as either male or female, and they are different. The two sexes are joined together in marriage. The Bible views sex as a part of the person, part of how God created them.
The effort by the current radical activist class to substitute their own cult-like delusions for God’s moral truth will only end in destruction. Already we are seeing the fallout as more and more young people, preyed upon and pushed into undergoing medical treatments and barbaric surgeries, are now coming forward to detail the permanent, irreversible damage done to them by shockingly unethical medical professionals blinded by ideology, fear, and/or greed.
Hopefully, more courts will follow the lead of Judge Kacsmaryk and use logic and jurisprudence to prevent gender ideology warriors from bypassing the Constitution and deviously twisting the existing law as a way to force every segment of society to adopt their dangerous views.
Ready to dive deeper into the intersection of faith and policy? Head over to our Theology of Politics series page where we’ve published several long-form pieces that will help Christians navigate where their faith should direct them on political issues.
