The RESPECT Title IX Act
A Model Law to End the Neverending
Story of Title IX Rulemaking
Five years ago, Secretary Betsy DeVos’s Title IX rule restored fairness and common sense to our schools, colleges, and universities. For the first time in history, the federal government prohibited in a regulation sexual harassment in education, ensured due process in campus disciplinary proceedings, and safeguarded free speech.
These historic regulations have been under attack since their publication. The prior administration gutted these campus due process and free speech rules and twisted a law meant to protect women and girls to allow boys into girls’ sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms. These changes didn’t promote fairness—they erased it. The courts and the current administration have thankfully ended those harmful policies.
But who’s to say things won’t change again when a new administration comes to Washington, D.C.?
We need a permanent legislative fix—one that bars federal agencies from engaging in backroom bureaucratic maneuvering to undercut Title IX’s clear text and purpose. The “regulatory ping-pong” between administrations serves no one—not students, not teachers, not schools.
The Defense of Freedom Institute’s Respect Equality in Sports, Privacy, and Education and Campus Transparency Act, or RESPECT Title IX Act, is a model law that gives lawmakers the blueprint for enduring reform.
What’s the Problem?
In 2024, the prior administration radically rewrote Title IX—allowing boys to compete in girls’ sports and use girls’ bathrooms, while punishing teachers and students who refused to use made-up pronouns and substantially diluting campus due process and free speech protections. Fortunately, the courts have blocked the 2025 rule, and the current administration refuses to enforce it.
But without a law—an enduring legislative solution—a future administration can erase these protections.
Our Solution: A Model Law to End the Regulatory Whiplash
DFI’s RESPECT Title IX Act provides a permanent fix to the regulatory ping-pong. Our model law would:
Protect Women & Girls
Schools and colleges would be required to keep girls’ sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms separate based on binary, biological sex—not gender identity.
Codify Campus Due Process Protections
Accused students and staff deserve a fair process—not biased, secret investigations. Among other reforms, the RESPECT Title IX Act bans “single investigator” models and ensures fairness for all.
Uphold Free Speech and Religious Freedom
No more speech codes or compelled pronouns. Students and teachers keep their free speech rights and religious freedom.
Support Parents’ Rights
The law makes clear: parents—not the government— decide what’s best for their kids. Schools can no longer use Title IX to justify keeping secrets from parents and indoctrinate children behind closed doors.
Support Faith-Based Schools
Institutions can adhere to their religious beliefs without worrying about the loss of federal funding—with clear protections and procedures built into the law.
Bar Agency Rulemaking
Bureaucrats can’t issue regulations to interpret Title IX. Agencies would enforce the law as required by the statutory text and not as directed by a particular administration.
Why This Matters
Title IX is stuck in a game of endless rules and remakes. One administration strengthens it. The next one tries to tear it apart, leaving women and girls to suffer and eroding due process, free speech, and religious liberty on campus.
It’s Time to Break the Cycle.
The RESPECT Title IX Act will protect students once and for all.
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Model Law
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Here’s What Supporters Are Saying
Cory Brewer
Education Counsel, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty
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“Every student deserves the opportunity to learn and compete with dignity and fairness. For over 50 years, Title IX has protected those opportunities for women and girls in education, and that commitment deserves to be honored. We applaud the efforts by DFI to bring fairness and common sense back to the classroom.”
Lance Christensen
Vice President of Government Affairs and Education Policy, California Policy Center
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“The simplicity of Title IX — fought for by women to secure their spaces and opportunities — has been assailed and hijacked by highly political actors in a radicalized culture. It’s time to clarify what women advocated for in the 1970s during the initial passage of Title IX and restore its clear, original purpose: protecting women.”
Justin Dillon
Partner, Dillon PLLC
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“The Defense of Freedom Institute’s RESPECT Title IX Act is brilliant. It takes a smart, sensitive, and balanced approach to the handling of difficult issues ranging from gender ideology to due process. Should it pass, DFI’s model law would end, once and for all, the era of whipsaw regulations we’ve been in for the last decade and a half.”
Julie Hamill
Principal Attorney, California Justice Center
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“It is disheartening that in 2025, we are still fighting for women’s spaces, sports, and educational opportunities. While it should be self-evident, the current political climate necessitates the clear and unequivocal legislation of biological reality. This legislation is crucial to safeguard the rights and opportunities of American girls and women, both now and for future generations. Further, the inclusion of due process protections is essential to protect boys and men from unfair proceedings.”
Kim Hermann
President, Southeastern Legal Foundation
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“Defense of Freedom Institute’s proposal to amend Title IX ensures that America’s girls and women will forever be provided an equal opportunity to education and be protected in our schools and in sports. Without this type of comprehensive legislative reform, the door remains open for future administrations to erode Title IX’s protections and force radical gender ideology back into our schools, just like the Biden Administration did. SLF is thankful that DFI is leading this effort.”
Carrie Lukas
President, Independent Women’s Forum
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“It’s incredibly important that we use the momentum we have to codify protections for women and girls. Executive orders are important, but we need legislation. That’s why Independent Women is so glad that the Respect Equality in Sports, Privacy, and Education and Campus Transparency Act (RESPECT Title IX Act) has been created and everyone in Congress—on the left and the right—should support it.”
Dean McGee
Senior Counsel for Educational Freedom, Liberty Justice Center
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“The provisions of this model legislation that reinforce due process, protect free expression, and uphold parental rights reflect the same principles we fight for every day in court, and would help reaffirm the constitutional protections that should apply in every school setting.”
Rachel N. Morrison
Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center
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“This model law recognizes the reality that sex is biological and binary—male and female. It allows Congress the opportunity to determine the full scope of Title IX and removes the ability of unelected government officials to expand Title IX in ways not voted on by the people’s representatives. Congress should jump at the opportunity to provide much needed clarity to the application of Title IX.”
Beth Parlato
Senior Legal Advisor, Independent Women’s Law Center
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“The RESPECT Title IX Act reaffirms the foundational principles of fairness, privacy, and parental rights in education. By protecting women’s sports and spaces, ensuring due process on campus, and upholding freedom of speech, this model legislation restores the original intent of Title IX—equal opportunity without ideological coercion.”
Sarah Parshall Perry
Vice President & Legal Fellow, Defending Education
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“By manipulating the plain language of one brief, simply worded federal civil rights law–Title IX–the Biden Administration was able to obliterate free speech, women’s equality, due process, and ideological diversity in federally funded schools with the stroke of a pen. In so doing, it ignored a mountain of evidence relative to Title IX’s incontrovertible origins in the movement for educational equality, played favorites with preferred classes of students to the detriment of others, and treated both religious and secular objectors as targets ripe for federal investigation. DFI’s model legislation aims to prevent a future administration from ever again playing fast and loose with a long-standing federal law to achieve its own desired political ends. Their bill is not just a welcome development–it’s a critical one.”
William E. Trachman
General Counsel, Mountain States Legal Foundation; Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights
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“American campuses today are extensively governed by Title IX and its regulations. From athletics, to bathrooms, to sexual harassment allegations, Title IX is an inescapable feature of school life. And those schools and their students suffer when predictability and certainty give way to radical ideological demands made by activist groups, or previously, to the Biden-Harris Administration. What DFI has done here is to restore the values of predictability and certainty, while ensuring that the original and enduring definition of ‘sex’ is never distorted or watered down. I applaud this effort, and look forward to seeing a day when fairness, due process, and biological reality are firmly entrenched in American law.”