Following a sparsely attended public meeting, the Dysart Unified School District’s five-member Governing School Board passed a resolution undermining new federal protections against gender identity discrimination, putting millions of dollars in school funding on the line, and sending a chilling message to trans students.
Under the Biden administration, the Department of Education expanded the scope of Title IX, the landmark legislation signed by President Nixon in 1972 that prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational settings that accept federal funding.
The new regulations Biden implemented would prohibit discrimination based on “stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.” Those changes go into effect Aug. 1 this year.
Biden's changes to Title IX have elicited strong opposition from the rightwing group Moms For Liberty which opposes transgender rights, and has resulted in multiple lawsuits in conservative legislature-controlled states.
“Moms For Liberty is a manufactured group that has a broad but thin membership,” said Eliza Byard, the former director of the LGBTQ non-profit GLSEN, who has helped run school board campaigns against candidates backed by the scandal-plagued political group. “They have a lot of financial support from a network of conservative extremists that want to get rid of public education and have hit upon ways to try to sow doubt in parents' minds about the quality and safety of the education their children are getting.”
Lawsuits brought by the group have resulted in Title IX changes being postponed in 14 states, not including Arizona.
During the meeting, a pair of attendees spoke in favor of banning the changes and gave Moms For Liberty a shout-out while voicing their support for the resolution and argued that the expanded Title IX regulations endangered young girls.
“We wanted to come here to support the Dysart board members who are fighting against these radical changes that would put our students at risk of having sexual harassment charges brought against them, or even risk our girls' safety in the restroom or locker room, or maybe even lose their sports and scholarships opportunities,” said Becky Smith, a Peoria resident who has in the past posted false information on her Facebook page about school bathrooms to drum up fear around trans people.
Heather Rooks, a governing school board member of Peoria Unified School District, praised the impending decision online weeks earlier saying, without evidence, that the new Title IX decisions weaken privacy rights for cisgender school-aged girls.
Rooks, who has consistently used her position on the school board to proselytize Christianity, is being sued by a nonbinary teacher for using defamatory language and trying to fire them from their job for being transgender.
Jeanne Casteen, the executive director of Secular AZ, said that "kids are being told by elected officials that their life does not matter."
Evan Bejar
'Solution in search of a problem'
Critics of the resolution said that the new policy could endanger the district’s transgender students by sending a dangerous message to an already vulnerable group.“They're sending the message to the families, to the trans members of that community, that you're not worthy, that you're not human, that I won’t even acknowledge you,” said Jeanne Casteen in a phone interview. Casteen serves as the Executive Director of Secular AZ, a nonpartisan advocacy group that protects the constitutional separation of church and state. “These kids are being told by elected officials that their life does not matter.”
Amid the growing backlash against LGBTQ rights nationwide, suicide rates for LGBTQ+ youth remain alarmingly high. Roughly half of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, according to The Trevor Project’s 2023 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People. Despite the ongoing mental health crisis sweeping the nation, the Dysart Unified School District made headlines last year when it voted to eliminate school social workers.
According to the resolution, adhering to the expanded Title IX protection would run afoul of the board’s commitment to “empowering parental involvement in education,” a key goal of Moms For Liberty. It would result in an “obtuse overreach” that could culminate in “criminalizing innocent children, or the people of the varying faiths that commonly and firmly believe in truth, such as a Creator of two distinct and wonderfully made sexes.”
Casteen pushed back on the idea that one student’s religious belief that there were only two sexes should justify the discrimination of another student.
“It is a clear violation of the establishment clause and the separation of church and state,” said Casteen. “They are free to be bigots in their church but you can’t do that in public school.”
Tammi Walker, an associate professor of law and psychology at The University of Arizona, describes the resolution as a “solution in search of a problem.”
“I don't know what the intent of this resolution was, other than to put people on notice,” Walker said. “This isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
Students or faculty who experience discrimination can still file a report online with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights
Ignoring the Title IX regulations is a risky move that could be costly for the school district, which spans 140 square miles and includes parts of El Mirage, Glendale, Surprise, and Youngtown.
The district serves 23,000 students, according to its website, and includes 16 elementary schools, four middle schools, four comprehensive high schools, a preschool, and one alternative program. The district expects to receive $21,000,000 from the federal government in 2025, according to the budget that the board approved earlier in the meeting.
Losing federal funds because of Title IX violations is unlikely but not impossible, according to Walker.
“The more likely thing is that the federal agency will work with that educational program or entity and try to get them to comply with the law, as opposed to immediately snatching their funds,” Walker said, adding that investigations into Title IX violations could take up to five years to be closed.
In the meantime, students in the district return to school from their summer holidays on Aug. 1.
