Far-right extremists are engaged in a calculated campaign to radically transform our society and enforce rigid gender roles. 

  • By attacking longstanding federal protections against sex discrimination, extremists seek to control and punish anyone who accesses abortion, IVF, birth control, or other reproductive health care; who has sex outside of marriage; who is queer, trans, or nonbinary; or who departs from their regressive view of gender roles and gender hierarchies.  
  • In Project 2025—a policy agenda for the next far-right administration—extremists have shamelessly outlined their calculated plan to target sex discrimination protections. For example, Project 2025 would eviscerate sex-discrimination protections from federal regulations, radically restructure federal agencies to diminish their ability to enforce civil rights protections, and weaponize the federal government—including the courts—to enforce discriminatory policies. 
  • Extremists are also bringing an avalanche of lawsuits challenging protections against sex discrimination in schools, workplaces, and health care—including the Biden Administration’s rules under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX), the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (Section 1557). 
  • These lawsuits seek to destroy well-recognized definitions of sex discrimination, including pregnancy discrimination, that are cornerstones of civil rights protections—with potentially far-reaching effects. Extremists are working towards a world where people can be discriminated against when they seek pregnancy-related care, including abortion; where employers don’t have to accommodate workers who need access to fertility care; and where trans students can be discriminated against at school.

This discriminatory crusade is already inflicting harm.

  • Litigants bent on undermining anti-discrimination protections have sought out ideologically extremist judges willing to flout the law and undermine protections against sex discrimination. These biased judges have, in turn, issued temporary yet sweeping orders blocking enforcement of portions of anti-discrimination laws and have ignored and overridden longstanding, well-established understandings of sex discrimination protections.i
  • As a result, students in 26 states and hundreds of schools are currently not protected by a Title IX rule that explicitly codifies strong federal protections for LGBTQI+ students, pregnant and parenting students, and students who experience sex-based harassment. And thousands of employers have been greenlit to deny accommodations to workers who access abortion and fertility care. 

In attacking longstanding anti-discrimination protections by targeting abortion and transgender people, far-right extremists seek to weaken sex discrimination protections on all fronts.  

  • By targeting sex discrimination protections, extremists seek to weaken the legal framework that ensures equal protection of the laws for all people.
  • They are targeting abortion even though federal law has long been clear that abortion-related discrimination falls under prohibited sex discrimination.ii But extremists are targeting abortion not only to punish those who seek abortion care, but also because they believe going after abortion will create cracks in the foundation of broader pregnancy and sex discrimination protections.
  • Similarly, extremists have targeted protections against gender identity harassment and discrimination in schools and workplaces, including the right of transgender and nonbinary students to safely access sex-separated restrooms and locker rooms. This is another thinly veiled attempt to weaken sex discrimination protections across the board by targeting some of the most vulnerable populations.
  • Attacks on abortion and gender identity threaten protections against sex discrimination on all fronts. Sex discrimination protections are interconnected; an attack on one form of gender equality is an attack on all.
  • The end goal is clear: Right-wing extremists seek to codify their discriminatory worldview into our nation’s laws and use the federal government to enforce it.

We must inform the public about these ongoing attacks on sex discrimination and work together to stop them.

  • Awareness of this extremist campaign to broadly attack sex discrimination protections is crucial. The public and key stakeholders are largely unaware that this is happening. If this campaign continues to be quietly successful, the damage could be far-reaching and take many decades to undo.
  • NWLC has been working diligently to file amicus briefs responding to these harmful attacks in the courts, and to bring wider attention to what is happening and the threat it poses.
  • While NWLC is well-positioned, as a multi-issue organization, to ring the alarm on how this calculated campaign will impact gender equity across the board—including in schools, workplaces, and sexual and reproductive healthcare—we can’t do this alone. We need others to join us in spotlighting this dangerous campaign, calling out the harm it poses, and making clear that attacks on one form of sex discrimination are attacks on all of us.

 

i Tennessee v. Becerra, No. 1:24-cv-00161-LG-BWR, 2024 WL 3283887 (S.D. Miss. July 3, 2024) (staying a portion of the Biden 1557 rule within the state of Florida and delaying its effective date), Florida v. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., No. 8:24-CV-1080-WFJ-TGW, 2024 WL 3537510 (M.D. Fla. July 3, 2024) (staying a portion of the Biden 1557 rule nationwide and delaying its effective date), Texas v. Becerra, No. 6:24-CV-211-JDK, 2024 WL 3297147 (E.D. Tex. July 3, 2024), modified on reconsideration No. 6:24-CV-211-JDK, 2024 WL 4490621 (E.D. Tex. Aug. 30, 2024) (originally staying the Biden 1557 rule in its entirety in Texas and Montana, modified on reconsideration to instead stay portions of the rule nationwide); Aiseosa Osaghae, Legal Challenges Against ACA’s Section 1557 Anti-Discrimination Protections, O’Neill Instit. (Oct. 1, 2024), https://oneill.law.georgetown.edu/legal-challenges-against-acas-section-1557-anti-discrimination-protections/; Amy Howe, Supreme Court blocks temporary enforcement of expanded protections for transgender students, SCOTUSBlog (Aug. 16, 2024), https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/08/supreme-court-blocks-temporary-enforcement-of-expanded-protections-for-transgender-students/; Jack Dura & Steve Karnowski, Judge lets over 8,000 Catholic employers deny worker protections for abortion and fertility care, AP News (Sept. 24, 2024), https://apnews.com/article/north-dakota-catholic-benefits-association-abortion-bc75f5aeac6cc89967154e0ee9ab7804.

ii Abortion-related discrimination refers to unequal treatment of people who had or wanted an abortion, including actions against them or rules that limit access to abortion services. This is a sex discrimination because only those assigned female at birth, including trans men and nonbinary people, can become pregnant. See, e.g., Allegheny Reprod. Health Ctr. v. Pa. Dep’t of Hum. Servs., No. 26 MAP 2021, 2024 WL 318389, at *62 (Pa. Jan. 29, 2024) (excluding abortion coverage from Medicaid is sex discrimination); N.M. Right to Choose/NARAL v. Johnson, 975 P.2d 841, 856 (N.M. 1998) (same); Doe v. Maher, 515 A.2d 134, 159 (Conn. Super. Ct. 1986) (same); cf. Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co., 141 F. Supp. 2d 1266, 1270–71 (W.D. Wash. 2001) (excluding contraceptive coverage from a comprehensive prescription plan is sex discrimination). Transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people who are assigned female or intersex at birth experience pregnancy, have abortions, and are underrepresented and underserved in abortion policy discourse. See, e.g., Heidi Moseson et al., Abortion Experiences and Preferences of Transgender, Nonbinary, and Gender-expansive People in the United States, Am. J. Obstet Gynecol, Sep. 2020, at 1–2.