Over 1.27 million readers this year!

Wyoming’s Title IX lawsuit highlights governor’s complicated stance on transgender youth

Gordon previously drew a distinction between K-12 and collegiate sports, but new legal action takes issue with both.

LGBTQ+ advocates gathered outside the Wyoming State Capitol on Feb. 27, 2023. (Maggie Mullen/WyoFile)

By Maggie Mullen

Wyoming is taking the Biden administration to court over new Title IX rules intended to strengthen protections for LGBTQ+ students. Gov. Mark Gordon touted Wyoming’s involvement in the suit, though his own views on transgender athlete participation have varied in the past.

In April, the Education Department announced sweeping changes to the federal civil rights law enacted in 1972 to combat sex discrimination in federally funded schools and education programs.

The new rules expand Title IX to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time in the law’s 50-year history. 

Such changes, however, only seek to “politicize our country’s education system to conform to the radical ideological views of the Biden administration and its allies,” according to the 1,085-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas. 

Gov. Mark Gordon and Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder applauded the suit Tuesday in a joint press release

“In Wyoming, we protect our girls,” Degenfelder said. “We will never allow outrageous political agendas to get in the way of that. Not in bathrooms, not in education, not in sports. Period.”

Gordon, meanwhile, called it “yet another instance of federal overreach, seeking to impose a new interpretation on a longstanding law.”

In his second term, Gordon has had to wrestle with his stance on the rights of transgender youth. It has not been a cut-and-dry issue for the governor. 

In March, he signed a bill to ban most gender-affirming medical care for children, but cautioned that the state was “straying into the personal affairs of families.”

A year earlier, he wrote a strongly worded letter criticizing a bill to prohibit transgender girls from competing in middle and high school sports, but also allowed it to become law without his signature. 

“We must recognize this topic does not lend itself to a facile solution,” Gordon wrote in the 2023 letter, which called the ban “overly draconian” and “discriminatory.” 

“There are victims on both sides of any action,” Gordon wrote. 

Asked about his various statements on the issue last November, the governor’s office sought to make a “distinction between highly competitive college athletics, and K-12 sports in Wyoming,” where Gordon “believes in the benefits of participation in athletics for all students, including transgender individuals,” when he signed onto a letter asking the NCAA to change its transgender-athlete policy. 

That distinction is missing from Tuesday’s federal lawsuit, which seeks to altogether block the new rules that could prevent federally funded schools — whether K-12 or collegiate — from barring transgender students from using restrooms, locker rooms and pronouns that match their gender identity. 

A spokesperson for Gordon referred WyoFile to the governor’s press release when asked whether the recent lawsuit departs from this previous distinction.

Gov. Mark Gordon in the Wyoming State Capitol during the 2022 session. (Mike Vanata/WyoFile)

Wyoming is joined in the suit by three other Republican-led states — Alaska, Kansas and Utah — as well as Moms for Liberty, and two other private, political organizations. 

At least 15 other Republican-led states have also filed federal lawsuits challenging the new Title IX regulations for adding transgender protections, while several other red states have also vowed to outright ignore the new rules, imperiling almost $13 billion in federal aid for public universities, according to Inside Higher Ed. 

Other details, opposition 

The complaint argues that the new regulations roll back the rights of girls and women by expanding Title IX’s protections to include gender identity in its definition of sex discrimination. 

It also argues that Title IX “was always explicit in its protections of biological females in educational programs and activities, including sports” and thereby the four-state coalition is suing “to defend their interest in the continued receipt of federal education funds.”

The suit identifies dozens of plaintiffs by their initials, including one from Park County, who competes on the junior varsity girls’ tennis team. It did not specify how “T.P.” would be harmed by the new rules, other than to say she plans to play on her school tennis team through high school. 

The suit also names Kailee Verdeyen, a University of Wyoming freshman, as an example of a student who fears they will be disciplined for their views if the rules take effect. 

“Verdeyen considers herself to be an ‘old school feminist’ and has deeply-held beliefs about women’s rights and supports Title IX’s intent to protect biological women,” according to the complaint. “While at the University of Wyoming, she has publicly expressed views consistent with these beliefs.”

If the rules take effect, the complaint states, Verdeyen “reasonably fears” she would face “investigatory and disciplinary proceedings for expressing views of this nature.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming, meanwhile, accused the state’s elected officials of using transgender youth “as a political punching bag.” 

“Across the country and right here in Wyoming, political attacks against transgender people have grown exponentially over the last several years,” Libby Skarin, acting executive director for the ACLU of Wyoming, wrote in a press release.

“This lawsuit is little more than political grandstanding and just the latest attempt to erase transgender people from society. This intolerance against a marginalized group of people is a distraction from our state’s real needs and hurts us all.”

The new rules are set to go into effect Aug. 1. 


This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.


Back

Related