BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME: “Education Dept Proposes ‘Nonbinary’ Category for Civil Rights Survey.”

The Department of Education could soon let schools list students as “nonbinary” in a federal survey of civil rights violations in K-12 schools.

 

The department’s Office for Civil Rights on Thursday announced the proposed addition as part of its biannual Civil Rights Data Collection Information Collection Request for the 2021-2022 school year. The department’s survey tracks discrimination and civil rights law violations against women and minorities in public schools. If enacted, this change would let schools list students as “nonbinary”—identifying as neither male nor female—to describe students’ sexual identity.

 

The change is the Biden administration’s latest move to extend Title IX protections to LGBT students. President Joe Biden in January signed an executive order banning discrimination based on “gender identity.” A subsequent executive order on sex and gender discrimination urged the Education Department to conduct a complete review of Title IX policies, which ban discrimination based on sex in federally funded institutions, like schools. The department in June declared that transgender students were protected under Title IX.

 

Including “nonbinary” as a category for sex helps the civil rights office “provide a greater understanding of the experiences of nonbinary students” and “enforce Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex, which includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” the department said in a press release.