Texas colleges and universities risk losing billions in federal funding if they comply with Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) directive to ignore a new federal rule that strengthens anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ students, Democrats warned a state council of education on Monday.
In a letter of congressional inquiry to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the state agency that oversees public postsecondary education, four Texas House Democrats said public colleges could violate students’ civil rights and lose their government funding if they follow Abbott’s orders to disregard the Title changes. IX — the federal civil rights law that prevents sex discrimination in schools and educational programs that receive government funding — which the Department of Education finalized in April.
The new rule, which covers discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time, is set to take effect on August 1, although federal judges have temporarily blocked enforcement in 10 GOP-led states.
Abbott, in a letter to President Biden in April, called the changes “illegal” and said his state would not implement them.
Monday’s letter, led by Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and signed by Democratic Reps. Sylvia Garcia, Al Green and Sheila Jackson Lee, accuses Abbott and other public officials who have pledged to reject the Biden administration’s rule to use schools as “political pawns.”
“We recognize that Texas colleges and universities have been placed in an undesirable position due to coercive pressure from an overzealous governor, a lieutenant governor, and an attorney general with a proven record of using the advantages of their public offices to punish those who do not they do. bend the knee to your prejudiced political program,” the legislators wrote.
“If Texas educational institutions are unable to adapt their policies in accordance with upcoming revisions to Title IX, the consequences would be catastrophic,” they added. “By losing billions of dollars in federal funding, institutions would be unable to provide the scholarships most students need to afford and access our colleges and universities. In fact, hundreds of thousands of aspiring Texas students would have their educational opportunities put at risk.”
Refusing to adhere to the administration’s new rule, which also strengthens discrimination protections for pregnant students and makes changes to how schools handle sexual misconduct complaints, could also put students’ civil rights at risk, they argued. the Texas Democrats.
They referenced a lawsuit filed last month by two professors at the University of Texas at Austin who challenged provisions of the rule that excuse student absences for out-of-state abortions and require schools to respect the pronouns of transgender and non-transgender students. conform to gender.
“This kind of bigoted and narrow-minded view is the exact kind of harm that Title IX civil rights protections were designed to prevent,” the lawmakers wrote.
A federal judge earlier this month handed a small victory to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) by blocking similar changes to Title IX that were proposed by the Biden administration in 2021.
Although Title IX is a federal law, each administration takes a different approach to enforcing its regulations, which schools are then required to follow as a condition of receiving government funding. Former President Trump said last month that he would reverse the Biden administration’s rule “on day one” of his presidency if he were reelected in November.
Resolutions of disapproval introduced this month by House and Senate Republicans aim to strike down the new rule before its enforcement date, and lawsuits challenging the law in more than a dozen Republican-led states are still pending.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
