Biden believed transgender athletes had unfair advantage against biological girls: report
Former president Joe Biden's administration attempted to give transgender athletes further protections in its revision of Title IX, but his reported true feelings were kept to himself.
The proposal would have redefined sex in Title IX as "gender identity," but the proposal was ultimately struck down by a federal judge in January, less than two weeks before President Donald Trump took office a second time.
However, a new report by the New York Times says that Biden himself did not agree with trans athletes participating in women's and girls sports.
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"According to a number of former Biden-administration officials, there remained a simmering debate inside the administration about whether those Title IX protections should extend to sports," the Times reported, saying that "one side…maintained that there was no legal difference between letting trans students use bathrooms that align with their gender identity and letting trans student athletes play on sports teams that align with their gender identity."
However, Biden was "on the other side…who believed that the competitive, zero-sum nature of sports made them different from bathrooms — that some transgender athletes would enjoy unfair physical advantages over women.
"Most important, one of the officials holding this view was Biden himself," the Times wrote.
The Times received a quote from a former Biden administration official who said Biden was "particularly focused on the competition issue."
However, the administration was mostly silent until 2023, because they didn't want to "delve any deeper into the…debate ahead of the 2022 midterms."
Recent polling shows that roughly 80% of Americans side with Biden's reported feelings on the issue.
An agent for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Title IX, which was passed into law in 1972, prohibited sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. It stated, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
President Trump has since signed an executive order that bars transgender athletes from competing against biological girls and sports, but several states have defied the order, most notably Maine, which resulted in a freeze of federal funding.
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