Introduction
Activists abuse Federal Title IX prohibitions against sex discrimination to promote progressive “gender” ideology. The U.S. Department of Education, individual Title IX offices, accreditors, and colleges and universities now punish Americans who reject invented rights to “gender preference,” “gender identity,” and “gender expression.” State policymakers must act to reverse this aggressive ideological revolution taking control of American’s public universities. They should require public universities to define faculty, staff, and students by “sex,” referring to biological status at birth, rather than by “gender identity,” “gender expression,” or any other subjective definition that is mental, psychological, cultural, or emotional in nature.
We have separated out this model act from the provisions of the Campus Freedoms Act because it prescribes a policy to university administrations rather than guaranteeing the rights of individuals within universities. Yet we believe the Human Nature Act also is necessary to preserve freedom on campus. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion cannot co-exist with rights to “gender identity” or “gender expression,” which require other people to assent to an individual’s arbitrary and mutable definition of his “gender,” regardless of their religious tenets, their conscience, or their right to speak freely. Policymakers cannot defend these freedoms unless they require universities to classify students by sex.
More importantly, it is true that humans are defined by sex and false that they are defined by “gender identity” or “gender expression.” Universities should neither affirm lies nor require members of a university community to assent to them. They cannot function as institutions that seek out truth when they affirm and require assent to falsehoods.
Our model bill requires public universities to classify faculty, staff, and students by biological “sex” rather than by subjective and arbitrary “gender.”
Higher education administrations cannot be trusted to enforce this act, unless 1) an independent official is present on campus to enforce compliance; and 2) state policymakers can threaten credible budgetary sanctions for noncompliance. Proper enforcement of this model bill therefore requires the passage of the Ombudsman Act and the College Finances Act.
Model Legislative Text
Section A [“Biological Classification”]
- The {Board of Regents} of the {State} public university system, each institution of higher education that receives state funding, and each school, office, and department within each institution of higher education that receives state funding, shall classify all faculty, staff, and students by sex.
- The {Board of Regents} of the {State} public university system, each institution of higher education that receives state funding, and each school, office, and department within each institution of higher education that receives state funding, shall define “sex” as “A person’s physical condition of being male or female as determined by a person’s chromosomes and identified at birth by a person’s anatomy, which is not mental, psychological, cultural, or emotional in nature, dependent on an individual’s affective relations with other individuals, on an individual’s self-perception, or on that individual’s perception by any other person or persons.”
- The {Board of Regents} of the {State} public university system, each institution of higher education that receives state funding, and each school, office, and department within each institution of higher education that receives state funding, shall enact or execute no policy or regulation that classifies faculty, staff, or students by concepts such as “gender,” “gender identity,” “gender expression,” and “gender preference,” or by any concept dependent upon mental, psychological, cultural, or emotional status, dependent on an individual’s affective relations with other individuals, on an individual’s self-perception, or on that individual’s perception by any other person or persons.”
- The {Board of Regents} of the {State} public university system, each institution of higher education that receives state funding, and each school, office, and department within each institution of higher education that receives state funding, shall enact or execute no policy or regulation that requires or encourages faculty, staff, or students to classify faculty, staff, or students by concepts such as “gender,” “gender identity,” “gender expression,” and “gender preference,” or by any concept dependent upon mental, psychological, cultural, or emotional status, dependent on an individual’s affective relations with other individuals, on an individual’s self-perception, or on that individual’s perception by any other person or persons.”
- This law shall not affect laws or policies governing “intersex” individuals, sometimes referred to as possessing “disorders of sex development,” who shall be defined as “having sexual or reproductive anatomy or chromosomal pattern that does not seem to fit typical definitions of male or female.”
Section B [“Severability”]
If any provision of this chapter, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this chapter and the application of its provisions to any other person or circumstance shall not be affected thereby.
The National Association of Scholars, in consultation with other supporters and friends of the Civics Alliance, drafted these model bills to translate into legislative language the principles in the Civics Alliance’s Civics Curriculum Statement & Open Letter. Just as these bills have been drafted with the expectation that different states will modify them as they see fit, they also have been drafted with the expectation that not every supporter of the Civics Alliance will endorse these bills or every part of them. Individual Civics Alliance signatories and supporters should not be assumed to have endorsed these bills, unless they say so explicitly.