Over fifty years ago, Congress enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 with the clear purpose to comprehensively root out discriminatory barriers to educational opportunity for all students. Since then, Title IX has meaningfully expanded opportunities for women, girls, and all who face sex-based discrimination in schools. 

Our organizations have worked for decades to strengthen Title IX enforcement and ensure all women and girls are safe and included in school settings. As women’s rights organizations, we collectively reject any attempt to limit Title IX’s protections by narrowly defining sex and reducing women and girls to their reproductive traits or anatomy.

Conditioning legal protections for women and girls based on their reproductive traits or anatomy imposes harms that ultimately fall on the very people that the drafters of Title IX sought to protect—individuals who are subjected to unfair treatment in schools based on gender roles or stereotypes. 

Such an approach exacerbates sex stereotypes and encourages intrusive scrutiny and invasive sex testing of all students, with some policies calling for physical inspection of students’ reproductive anatomy. The harmful impacts of this scrutiny fall squarely on those who defy gender expectations–including women and girls who have short hair, are taller, or are more muscular–and disproportionately on Black and brown women and girls and gender-expansive students. It also disregards the experiences of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex students, whose very existence refutes such narrow, outdated, and unscientific definitions of sex. 

We collectively reject this attempt to weaponize Title IX to exclude and discriminate against students for who they are. Instead, we must work to robustly fulfill Title IX’s promise that every student can learn in an environment free from sex-based discrimination, including harassment and violence. 

National Women’s Law Center 

Advocates for Youth 

American Association of University Women (AAUW) 

Clearinghouse on Women’s Issues 

Equal Rights Advocates 

Feminist Majority Foundation 

Just Solutions 

Know Your IX 

National Alliance to End Sexual Violence 

Sexual Violence Prevention Association (SVPA) 

Stop Sexual Assault in Schools 

Victim Rights Law Center 

September 14, 2026