The Daily Signal - Florida Ed Commissioner Says Biden Title IX Reinterpretation Would 'Erase Truth'

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

The 52nd anniversary of Title IX was on Sunday, but the Biden administration changed the interpret of the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs to allow male in female spaces. Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz Jr. joins The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss how the rule change harms girls, and how states can follow Florida's lead in fighting back. Diaz is a former state legislator, as well as a teacher, administrator, and coach. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Capital One, we're more than just a credit card company. We're people just like you who believe in the power of yes. Yes to new opportunities. Yes to second chances. Yes to a fresh start. That's why we've helped over 4 million Canadians get access to a credit card. Because at Capital One, we say yes, so you don't have to hear another no. What will you do with your yes?

Get the yes you've been waiting for at Capital One.ca.ca. slash yes. Terms and conditions apply. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, June 26th. I'm Virginia Allen. This week marks the 52nd anniversary of Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs. The 52nd anniversary comes as the Biden administration has announced changes to Title IX that would directly harm women and girls. These changes include redefining sex within Title IX to include gender identity and sexual orientation. Legal experts say that the new rule will allow males who identify as women to compete in girl sports, enter women's lockrooms, bathrooms, even dormitories.

My colleague Elizabeth Troutman just had a chance to sit down with Florida Education Commissioner Mani Diaz to discuss how Florida is fighting back against the Biden administration's reinterpretation of Title IX and how other states can do the same. Stay tuned for Elizabeth's conversation with Florida Education Commissioner Mani Diaz after this. Looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues from America's outpost here in Washington, sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. You'll get top conservative research, a rundown of important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online and hot takes from our experts.

Sign up at heritage.org slash agenda or at the link in the show notes. I'm here with the Florida Commissioner of Education Mani Diaz Jr. on the 52nd anniversary of Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs. The Biden administration finalized its proposal for a reinterpretation of Title IX in April. This included adding gender identity to the list of sex-based protections. Legal experts say the new rule will allow males in women's and girls sports, female locker rooms, bathrooms, and more. Commissioner Diaz, how will this rule affect schools across America? Well, I mean, this is a terrible move by the Biden administration, but I guess expected. And it will affect our schools in so many ways.

I mean, specifically girls and women in our colleges, starting with sports, you know, the ability for girls to have that space was. granted in 1972 by a duly elected Congress signed by a duly elected president and has created an opportunity where we've seen a thousand percent increase in the participation in sports by girls and women since 1971. This will definitely would put a wrench in that and create not only a distraction but really an imposition on girls and it will erase the truth. These girls have the opportunity now to participate in sports programs And it builds such character, there's such an opportunity for girls and women. But not only that, the opportunity for scholarships, the opportunity for advancement would just be erased because of the fact that you would have individuals who are portraying to be women or deciding that they're going to violate the truth of biological sex and act as a woman and participate in that.

And it's just, it's not fair because the fact that we know that there's clear biological differences between men and women, including strength, stamina, and all those other things. just we've seen the examples of what happened with the swimmer, with Leah Thomas, situations where there's even been an MMA situation where we've had a female athlete injured. I mean, the examples over and over. So this would affect and take away really the opportunities from our girls and women. What does the Biden administration mean by gender identity? I don't even think they know, which is the part that is so frustrating. This is clearly just a part of an overarching agenda in which they're trying to erase truth.

So, you know, there's a fact that you have two genders. There's males and there's females. And you can't erase that fact. And I think they're just trying to create and confuse, really creating a dystopian society where anybody can just say, make up a truth and decide what they want to be. And really, again, it's very dangerous not only for, it's dangerous for our girls and women, not only because they can get injured because they lose opportunities. But the fact that you're eliminating with this rule,

would eliminate their privacy in locker rooms and bathrooms for our girls and women. And as a father of three girls, obviously that's very disturbing. And in Florida, we're fighting back to make sure that we put a stop to this. As biological sex loses its meaning across the country, how does Florida plan to fight back against this redefinition of sex discrimination? Well, the interesting part is thanks to the leadership of our great governor, Ron DeSantis. We've been doing this now for a few years. We passed the Women's Fairness and Sports Act.

In the state of Florida, you can only compete in a sport by your biological sex at birth. And we wanted to make that distinction to protect all of our female athletes, all of our girls that are both in high school and college participating in our state. It also, again, going back to the issue of the locker room and making sure that we're protecting these spaces for women, this was granted by Title IX in 1972. and all of a sudden the Biden administration wants to take us backwards. We've also implemented a law of parent rights where we have eliminated, you know, the teaching of gender ideology and other issues like CRT from our classrooms.

But look, the issue of gender ideology of any of those theories or those topics, that's for a parent to decide when they have that conversation and how they have that conversation within their family and with their kids, with their children. And so in Florida, we're protecting the parents right. We also protect the fact that parents need to know if a school is going to try to provide services. Unfortunately, we had a case where a student was receiving services and therapy in a transition situation for weeks, maybe months, and a parent was never notified. I mean, parents need to be notified if you're going to provide additional tutoring for a student, especially in situations where you're providing something that's going to affect their health and well-being,

parents need to be notified. And again, not only protecting sports, not only protecting the classroom, but also making sure that we can't erase the truth, right? That we know that there is a biological fact, that there's males and there's females. And in the state of Florida, we continue to not only support that. Unfortunately, we had to enforce that law recently where we had, a violation of that at a high school in Florida where they had a, there was a scheme, actually with a parent involved, to change records and have a biological male participated in female sports. The Athletic Association took swift action to sanction the school not only monetarily, but also put them on probation, where if there is a violation during their permission,

they can lose their ability to participate in sports statewide. And the individuals involved in that, in that situation have been sanctioned. And in fact, it will lead to the, the loss of a teaching license, coaching license for the individual that was involved in that situation. So we take it very seriously. We not only put it in our statutes, but we enforce it. And that's, you know, really thanks to the bold leadership of Governor DeSantis in standing in that breach and saying, we're not going to allow the truth to be erased in Florida. What is the Parental Rights and Education Act? And how does this Title IX reinterpretation affect that act? Well, the Parental Rights and Education Act covers, like I said, a myriad of situations

where parents have rights to be involved in the education. We believe firmly in Florida that parents are, number one, the first teachers of our kids, and number two, the kids belong to the parents. They don't belong to the government. They don't belong to the school. They don't belong to the teachers. Teachers are there to teach, and we have standards. And so this allows our parents to have complete transparency on what is going on in schools.

You may have heard of this book challenge that exists in Florida where the left is saying we're banning books. We don't ban books in Florida. What we do is we give parents the opportunity to look at what's in the classroom, what's in the libraries at our schools. And if there's something pornographic, which despite what the left says we have found in several schools, they have the right to challenge that book. And there's a local process by which the school board can decide whether that book stays or whether it's removed. That doesn't mean that adults can't buy this book at a bookstore or if parents choose to expose their children to certain material, that's a parent's right. But it doesn't belong in our schools where our students are going there to learn.

And look, we have, we should be focusing on academic learning. Our students need to know how to read. They need to know math. They need to learn civics, which is very important in Florida. As you know, we've made a huge strides, thanks to our governor. But this protects the rights of the parent to be involved and to have a say in the things that our students are exposed to, and it includes the issue of gender ideology. Why are we having conversations about this topic in schools where it's not in our standards? You know, this is not what they're

supposed to be covering in school. And at the end of the day, public school teachers are public employees, and the legislature and the state has a right to determine the curriculum and the standards of what's being taught. And when you sign up to teach, you're signing up to teach those standards and to educate our kids. It's not an opportunity for teachers to decide they're going to indoctrinate or impose their personal views on any of our students. And so that's the crux and really the center of our parent rights statute in Florida. And after this rule change, how can Florida and other states that believe in biological sex protect women's sports? Well, I think that there's this is, there's multiple levels here.

Number one, aside from everything, we have to protect state sovereignty, right? We have state statutes that don't allow men to participate in biological men cannot participate. in women's sports in Florida. They cannot, the private spaces of locker rooms and bathrooms are protected. Parents have rights. There's no gender ideology. But there's a constitutional issue here, too, where the way this rule is written, if you misgender someone, in other words, if you just used a wrong term with someone in casual conversation, you are now subject to being guilty of sexual harassment. I mean, that is completely absurd and dystopian. And I think what you've seen, not only from Florida, but we've joined about 20 other states. We have taken legal action. We currently

have a case in a federal court in Alabama in conjunction with Alabama and some other states and some other organizations to hopefully reach an injunction here soon this month, as we've seen happen in the other circuits, to protect our state sovereignty, to protect the constitutional rights of individuals in our state, and to make sure that this is not, that this, the unelected bureaucrats are not able to change a law that was passed by duly elected members of Congress to protect girls and women. And so I think that we're taking the legal action. We've taken some steps. I sent a memorandum directly to our school districts and colleges directing them clearly that we're not going to follow this unconstitutional rule, that they are to wait and stand pat and not try to enforce

anything that's in that rule because we believe it's unconstitutional. It violates state statutes. and we are challenging it in court. What do you think the chances of that lawsuit prevailing are and what could some potential roadblocks be? So look, any time that you go through the legal circuits, it could be somewhat unpredictable. But I think, and I'm not an attorney by any means, but I do think if you look at it on its face, you have several opportunities where it can be successful. Again, the violation of the First Amendment, the violation of states' sovereignty and not being

able to implement its own laws and the fact that you've taken a law that was passed by Congress through its process and signed by a president and have decided to completely invert it on its head with a rulemaking process by unelected bureaucrats without actually following the letter of that law. And so I do think the chances, and again, my optimism is emboldened by the fact that we've already seen it in two circuits. There have been injunctions that have been put in place in two of the cases already. Like I said before, we do expect that we will be successful in our case to gain that injunction and that this rule will be thrown out by the courts. And what is your advice to parents across the country, particularly in states that aren't like

Florida and maybe aren't challenging this rule change? What should parents do if they don't want their daughters sharing private spaces with males or playing sports with males? Well, you know, I'd say, unfortunately, the first thing is elections matter and they need to get involved in the election process. But now that this rule is kind of being rolled out, I think they need to show up and participate in the process. They need to show up at school board meetings. They need to show up at their legislature. And regardless of the partisan makeup of any of those entities, they need to show that the public is not okay with this, you know, implementation of an unconstitutional. rule that violates the Title IX, a law that was passed in 1972. I think parents, more so now,

they are realizing, especially with things like Moms for Liberty and other organizations that have kind of organized moms. But I think that both moms and dad parents underestimate their ability to affect change by organizing and showing up at these meetings and putting pressure and demanding that elected officials and others have the courage to do the right thing and to protect our girls and our women. And do you think that the Biden administration has lost sight of the purpose of education with this type of rule being its focus? Look, the Biden administration has completely lost sight of the original purpose of education in this country. And if you have, I was a history teacher and if you have to understand history, I think it's important in civics. And I think that if you look at

the foundation of education in this country, the sole purpose of education was to be, you know, make sure that we had an educated populace that would be able to uphold our republic. I think if you look at our founding fathers, they knew that the system of government, that this great experiment, right, this great experiment required for those people that would be participating in the process to be educated and to have the responsibility of upholding the republic. And I think what the Biden administration is doing is putting that in peril. They're using it. to impose an agenda that is not only about this Title IX issue and erasing the truth when it comes to the reality that we have two genders, right, and that women are protected under Title IX,

but also infusing things and erasing the truth, you know, and trying to, by using intimidation, bullying, creating labels like saying that people are not tolerant, and those type of things, trying to erase the principles that this country was founded under. When you do that, it becomes very dangerous because they have figured out they started this movement way back at our higher ed institutions. And now they're not bashful about the fact that they've injected or tried to inject it into our K-12 system because they know where does the future, where do the future leaders come? Where do the future voters come? Where does the future of this country comes? It comes from our schools and by injecting that agenda at that level, they want to erase the founding principles,

the values, the American values that we've always had in this country, they want to erase them. But it all coincides with an overarching agenda, which part of that is the open border, right? I know it sounds like it's not connected, but it is. If you have an open border and you have people flooding into this country that don't share those values or want to do us harm or are coming here thinking eventually that they're going to change America. Meanwhile, you're trying to impose this agenda, our own K-12 and education system at higher ed. You can see it's a concerted effort to completely transform America. And look, they haven't been hiding it for a while. I think it was, you know, when you heard President Obama say that he was

going to fundamentally transform America, I think these are signs. of what he meant, right? You're transforming America by eliminating borders. If you don't have a border, you don't have a country. You're transforming America by injecting all of these theories into our higher ed system and then eventually into our T-T-T-12 system and basically trying to indoctrinate our children and our young adults into a belief that, you know, take your pick, that America is bad, that America is guilty, that America is not that shining city on a hill that president. President Reagan described, and we just have to put a stop to that because it's not the truth. Between your time as a teacher to now, how have you seen radical gender ideology change the way

education works? Oh, completely. I mean, I can tell you, you know, and I tried to even go beyond that. I try to go back to the time when I was a student and thinking back of teachers, for the most part, in the classroom, you never knew what a teacher's political affiliation was. there weren't any causes or flags or anything put on the classroom walls. When I taught, you know, myself and my colleagues, my goal was always, look, I teach these classes.

My job is to impart information and have students debate and arrive at their own conclusions with the information that they have in their hand to critically think. I think, unfortunately, what you've seen across the country is that you have a lot of teachers that think that this is an opportunity for them to impose a certain view. some of them because they have their own agenda but this has permeated dangerous this dangerous agenda has permeated into the system to a point where some teachers may even feel like it's the thing they're supposed to be doing it's a job they're supposed to be doing and not sticking to the actual standards and so I think it's changed dramatically I think you've always had individuals that have

obviously every individual has their own personal view you've never seen the imposition of an agenda or individuals feeling like they have the freedom to impose that agenda on students like you do now. I just don't remember it during the time I was teaching or I was a school administrator. I certainly don't remember it during the time that I was a student, but they will tell you it's not happening. I promise you we have so many examples, unfortunately, that it does happen. And that's not to cast any dispersion on teachers as a whole.

the vast majority of our teachers go to work every day to try to improve the academic performance of our students, to educate our students, to teach the standards, to teach math, to teach reading, to teach civics, you know, to teach science. But unfortunately, there are individuals like there are in any other field where they've taken this on. And again, I think the large scale issue is that it's permeated into kind of the ethos of being accepted as a practice. And I do think that, you know, teachers unions have also jumped in and joined on making that problem worse because you oftentimes see teachers unions instead of worrying about just teacher salaries, working conditions. They've delved into these social issues. They've become, quote unquote, social justice wars where they want to make students into activists. That's something that we just in Florida passed legislation to eliminate from our schools of education to make sure that what they're teaching is pedagogy, teaching the craft.

of teaching and not imposing these theories or these agendas into that education program. And what inspired you to move from teaching into the public square? Oh, well, it's interesting. I was always, you know, my dad was involved in local politics, not that he ran for office. I had the bug of being involved because, you know, because of my family. But it got to the point where as a teacher, as an administrator in, in a public school district, I became frustrated with a lot of the things that were going on. I just didn't like, and it really wasn't this issue we're talking about here, just things in general that needed to be better. And then at one point, I just decided, you know, I'm going to run for office.

In my first race, I was actually unsuccessful. I ran for school board in 2010 and lost that race before being successful in the very next cycle to get elected to the Florida House in 2012, where I went on to pursue the passion of education. I was fortunate enough to work. to become vice chair of the K-12 subcommittee, and then I became the chair of the Choice and Innovation Committee in the Florida House, and then I was the chair of the Education Appropriations Committee in the House before moving on to the Florida Senate, where I chaired the Educational Policy Committee.

So for me, it was a passion project. I did, you know, I did get involved in dabble and other issues during my legislative career, but the bulk of it was, you know, focusing on education. And I was fortunate to be there at a time. over the last decade where we made so many strides and built on the reforms that had existed in Florida, especially in the areas of like school choice and now parents' rights and really continuing to evolve our accountability. So I got in and I was driven to public service because of the fact that I saw things that could be better. And I just got so frustrated. I said,

if I'm frustrated, it's upon me to do something about it. And I've, you know, been fortunate to have this opportunity. What can other education departments across the country do to follow Florida's example and fight back against this Title IX reinterpretation? Well, look, number one, the clear method that is available now with the timing of what's gone on is to take legal action. I mean, we've seen a flurry of lawsuits. I think I would encourage my colleagues across the United States to take legal action to try to get an injunction to put a stop to this unconstitutional rule, to protect their state sovereignty. And the other thing is you continue to work with your legislators

to put policies in place in your state to make sure that we protect the integrity of Title IX, to protect women's sports, to protect girls and women's locker rooms and bathrooms, and to protect the truth. So it's twofold. Number one, use the system that exists in our form of government, which is the courts.

And number two, use your legislative prerogative to put, statutes in place. States do have rights and they should pursue them. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having you. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us for the Daily Signal interview edition. Make sure that you check out our afternoon top news show that comes out every weekday around 5 p.m. where we bring you the top news of the day. And if you would, hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows from the Daily Signal podcast and leave us a five-star reading and review. We love hearing your feedback, and it also helps us to spread the word to new listeners.

Have a great rest of your day. We'll see you right back here at five for top news. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Bluey and Kate Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Mary Margaret O'Lehann, and Tyler O'Neill. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com. Thank you.