Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism
The chief effect of this order on state authority is to eliminate a wide swath of federal regulation and guidance that pressured public schools and other state and local programs receiving federal funds to follow practices like allowing biological males to play in women’s sports and access women’s locker rooms, prison facilities, and abuse shelters.
What to watch: There is a possibility that some agencies will interpret this order to authorize regulatory changes that pressure state officials not to continue Progressive practices even if they want to, such as its directive to the Department of Housing and Urban Development to “submit for public comment a policy protecting women seeking single-sex rape shelters”—which implies a future rule may bar state recipients of federal shelter funding from allowing biological males to shelter with women. The order also directs the U.S. Attorney General to formulate rules for workplaces and other entities falling under the domain of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that would protect “the freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces,” which could be taken as authorization to create and enforce a right better left to states to define and protect.
January 20, 2025