A new rule from President Joe Biden’s administration blocking blanket policies to keep transgender students from using school bathrooms that align with their gender identity could conflict with laws in Republican-controlled states, including Alabama.
The clash over bathroom policy and other elements of a federal regulation finalized last week could set the stage for another wave of legal battles over how transgender kids should be treated in the U.S.
The 1,577-page regulation seeks to clarify Title IX, the 1972 sex discrimination law originally passed to address women’s rights and applies to schools and colleges that receive federal money.
The regulations, which are to take effect in August, spell out that Title IX bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, too. Read more about the federal regulation here.
In Alabama, lawmakers are considering legislation that would define who is considered a man or a woman under state law, saying it must be based on reproductive systems and not gender identity.
The legislation declares “there are only two sexes” and writes definitions for male, female, boy, girl, mother and father into state law.
“In Alabama, we know what a woman is,” Republican state Rep. Susan Dubose, the bill sponsor, said in a statement. “This law will provide clarity for our courts and is an important step in increasing transparency in our state while protecting women’s rights, women’s spaces and preventing sex discrimination,” she said.
Opponents said the legislation is part of ongoing attacks on the rights of transgender people to simply go about their daily lives.
“I don’t believe it does anything to protect women’s rights,” Democratic state Rep. Marilyn Lands said of the bill. “I believe what it’s attempting to do is silence, transgender, and nonbinary Alabamians.”
The bill states that “every individual is either male or female” and that “sex does not include ‘gender identity’ or any other terms intended to convey an individual’s subjective sense of self.” The legislation defines sex based on reproductive anatomy.
It says a woman is a person “who has, had, will have, or would have, but for a developmental anomaly, genetic anomaly, or accident, the reproductive system that at some point produces ova.”
The bill defines a man as a person “who has, had, will have, or would have, but for a developmental anomaly, genetic anomaly, or accident, the reproductive system that at some point produces sperm.”
It is not clear how the legislation would impact people who are considered intersex, or born with a combination of male and female biological traits. The legislation says that people with what it calls a “medically verifiable” diagnosis must be accommodated according to state and federal law.
The bill is part of a wave of legislation that seeks to regulate which bathrooms transgender people use, which school sports teams they can play on, and to prohibit gender-affirming medical care, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors.
