President Joe Biden’s Department of Education plans to enact new rule changes to civil rights law this May that would end free speech as Americans have known it.
The changes would inject gender ideology straight into the heart of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act by erasing the Supreme Court’s long-standing distinction between protected speech and punishable conduct.
In its 1999 ruling in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, the Supreme Court held that expressive activity such as speech can only constitute harassment when it is “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” that it can no longer be considered pure speech and is more properly viewed as actionable conduct. In the process, the court emphasized that single instances of speech — no matter how offensive to the listener — do not rise to the level of harassment.
The Biden administration is purposefully muddying the waters between mere speech and harassing conduct specifically to force the use of pronouns and gender-affirming language. Under the proposed rule, students and faculty can violate Title IX simply for refusing to use someone else’s “preferred” pronouns.
Ideally, investigations involving Title IX are mindful of First Amendment protections and proceed according to the American standard of due process that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Title IX has typically been reserved for incidents of sexual assault or harassment. Under the Biden administration, however, students and faculty could be reported for mere speech. By coercing and compelling speech, this administration will set legal precedent
