Weaver tells South Carolina schools to ignore Biden’s revised Title IX rules for LBGTQ+ students

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCBD)- South Carolina’s top education official told schools on Tuesday to ignore a revised set of Title IX rules recently issued by the Biden administration that extends the civil rights law’s protections to transgender students.

Last week, the Education Department unveiled changes to Title IX — a 1972 law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs that are federally funded.

Among the new set of rules — set to take effect on August 1 — is a provision that expands the law’s scope to protect against discrimination based on “sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics,” according to the Education Department.

Weaver called the changes “deeply troubling” in an April 23 memo to district school boards and superintendents.

“Now, under the guise of ‘fairness,’ the U.S. Department of Education seeks to expand the long-standing prohibition against discrimination based on ‘sex’ to include ‘sex stereotypes, sex-related characteristics (including intersex traits), pregnancy or related conditions, sexual
orientation, and gender identity,'” Weaver wrote in the memo obtained by News 2. “This is not fairness: it is fiat.”

She further slammed the new rule as possibly reversing decades of advancement for women and girls by putting them at a “disadvantage in the educational arena” and argues it infringes upon free speech.

“By redefining the class of people that Title IX intends to protect, the Biden administration’s rule seeks to change the meaning and purpose of the underlying law, thus compelling the speech of students and teachers related to preferred pronoun use; upending biology-based protections for females in athletics, bathrooms, locker rooms, overnight accommodations, and other sex-separate spaces and activities; placing massive legal uncertainty and compliance costs on districts; and creating chaos and confusion for teachers, students, and parents,” Weaver wrote.

Weaver warned implementing the revised regulations could violate federal law and recommended districts “not implement the new rule at this time.”

“We fully anticipate this rule will be tied up in litigation for some time and, eventually, will be struck down or modified, in whole or in part, by the federal courts,” Weaver wrote. “It is possible– even likely — that a court will enjoin the prior to its effective date.”

The Biden administration introduced proposed changes to Title IX in 2022 and Republican leaders have made repeated attempts to halt the process since.

In May 2023, Weaver and five other Republican state officials penned a letter to the Education Department expressing their opposition to proposed revisions related to transgender athletes. The administration originally planned to include a new policy forbidding schools from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes, but that provision was put on hold.

“This is not about being against anyone, but about being for fairness, safety, and biological reality,” the group wrote. “The proposed rule conflates gender identity with biological sex and, in so doing, eviscerates and silences the voice of South Carolina voters who have spoken clearly through their democratically elected representatives.”

Gov. Henry McMaster signed a law in May 2022 that bars transgender athletes from playing on school sports teams that match their gender identity. South Carolina is one of 24 states with such a ban.

Statewide LGBTQ advocates criticized Weaver’s recent memo as exhibiting a “lack of understanding and compassion” for LGBTQ+ students, particularly those who identify as transgender, nonbinary, and intersex, who have “seen their very existence being politicized” in recent years.

“In fact, her letter parrots much of the same inflammatory anti-LGBTQ+ language used by political pundits.  It’s time to take this type of political rhetoric out of our schools,” Chase Glenn, Executive Director for the Alliance For Full Acceptance (AFFA), said in a statement to News 2. “While Superintendent Weaver may not personally support the rights of LGBTQ+ students, she has the responsibility as the top school leader in our state to ensure that all students have equal rights and protections, and a safe place to learn and be themselves. The flagrant disregard shown for the Title IX rule tells me that our superintendent unfortunately does not have the best interests of all students in mind.”

Weaver is the second state education official to advise against implementing the new regulations behind Louisiana’s superintendent of education, Cade Brumley.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.