Dive Brief:
- The House Education and Workforce Committee advanced four K-12- related bills on Tuesday, including a proposal to define “sex” as biological sex under Title IX. The Republican-led Title IX Clarification Act of 2026 seeks to codify a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J.
- Democrats on the committee opposed the Title IX bill, as Ranking Member Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said in his opening statement during the markup that the legislation would “narrow the scope of existing civil rights law by writing transgender students out of Title IX’s protections.”
- The other three K-12-related bills that advanced out to the committee include proposals to allow parents to opt their child out of school-issued surveys or evaluations; to permit the use of federal education dollars to train students and teachers to safely and effectively use artificial intelligence; and to revive the Presidential Fitness Test to promote physical activity for students.
Dive Insight:
In the Supreme Court’s joint decision in two related cases — West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox — all justices agreed that Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education, allows athletic teams to be separated based on sex.
The June ruling ultimately permits at least 27 states to continue their policies that ban transgender students from playing on athletic teams that align with their gender identity. However, the justices did not prohibit policies in other states like California that allow transgender students to participate in sports that align with their gender identities.
The Republican-led effort to codify the Supreme Court’s ruling on Title IX is happening as education policy experts project that the U.S. Department of Education may rely on the same case in decision-making on other LGBTQ+ issues, such as pronoun usage or bathroom and locker room access in schools.
The committee’s Republicans released a Tuesday statement saying the 10 total bills that advanced out of the markup — including the K-12 measures — “aim to protect women and girls, safeguard the rights of students and parents, prepare students and educators to use AI safely and effectively in the classroom, [and] encourage healthy habits among children.”
Two civil rights advocacy groups and the National Education Association sent separate letters to the committee earlier this week calling on lawmakers to oppose H.R. 8781, the Title IX bill.
NEA, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, wrote to the committee on July 20 that the Title IX bill “would substantially narrow protections for transgender students and undermine the overall purpose of Title IX: preventing discrimination in education.”
If enacted, NEA said, fallout from the bill could include the limitation of trans students from participating on sports teams and accessing restrooms or locker rooms that align with their gender identity. The legislation could increase stigmatization and discrimination toward trans and nonbinary students.
Additionally, there could be legal conflicts with some court decisions and state laws, the union said.
In the Human Rights Campaign’s letter to the committee, the group said that Title IX isn’t about “simply reducing kids to their reproductive functions.” The law prohibits actions that “hold students to inappropriate sex stereotypes,” the letter said. That can include ensuring schools address sexual assault, protecting boys from being “singled out for not being masculine enough,” and that schools offer equal resources for segregated activities based on sex.
“The purpose of having civil rights protections in education is to ensure that every student has access to the educational opportunities they are entitled to,” the Human Rights Campaign said. “By contrast, H.R. 8781, which seeks to write LGBTQ+ students out of Title IX’s protections, does the opposite.”
As of Wednesday, there were no Senate companion bills for any of the K-12 measures that were advanced to the full House for a vote, according to Congress.gov.
