USA Today columnist Nancy Armour has accused the Heritage Foundation of targeting Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education, following the release of a report that criticized the law's modern application. Armour's commentary comes after she faced public backlash for a previous article about WNBA player Caitlin Clark.
The Heritage Foundation's report, authored by senior research fellow Scott Yenor, is titled "Title IX’s Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity." It asserts that stricter interpretations of Title IX have enforced rigid equality in school sports, negatively impacting both male and female student athletes.
"Title IX evolved from a seemingly modest anti-discrimination statute into a powerful engine of feminist social engineering, complete with proportionality mandates," the report states. "The result has been two systemic distortions: a prejudice in favor of a male-normed competitive model for women’s sports and a prejudice against men’s non-revenue programs."
Armour interpreted the report's findings as an effort by the organization to diminish protections for female athletes and roll back women's rights. "Our bodies, our self-confidence, our independence — they’re not going to stop until women have the same rights and opportunities they did before the 1970s. Which were almost none," Armour wrote. She further contended that the Heritage Foundation, as part of "Project 2025," is working to eliminate aspects of American society that deviate from its perceived "White, Judeo-Christian and heteronormative 'values,'" and seeks to enforce a specific definition of femininity, beginning with excluding transgender women from sports.
Yenor, the report's author, however, argued that his proposal is for reforms focused on opportunities for female-centric athletics rather than strict proportionality in male-dominated sports. "Equality under Title IX does not require identical outcomes or the erasure of sex differences. It requires opportunity rooted in human nature that will reveal genuine differences between the sexes," he wrote. He suggested that such an approach could sustain women's sports, protect male opportunities, and foster a healthier social order.
Armour's recent column follows controversy over her previous article in which she suggested that Caitlin Clark's on-court behavior put Black and queer WNBA players "in danger." She later issued an apology for her "inartful comparison" in that piece.