USA Today columnist Nancy Armour has responded to a Heritage Foundation report critical of Title IX. The report, titled “Title IX’s Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity,” critiques the current enforcement of the 1972 federal civil rights law, which prevents sex-based discrimination in educational programs receiving federal funds.
Authored by Scott Yenor, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation’s American Citizenship Initiative, the report suggests that rigid equality mandates in school sports have adversely affected both male and female athletes. It states, “Title IX evolved from a seemingly modest anti-discrimination statute into a powerful engine of feminist social engineering, complete with proportionality mandates.” The report argues there is bias favoring a competitive male model for women’s sports while disadvantaging men’s non-revenue programs.
Armour claims that the Heritage Foundation’s approach seeks to diminish protections for female sports and reverse women’s rights. She argues, “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.” Despite skepticism about the Heritage Foundation’s influence, Armour warns against ignoring the organization’s impact.
She notes that “Project 2025 has done too much damage already not to take the threat to Title IX seriously. The Heritage Foundation wants a United States that reflects their White, Judeo-Christian and heteronormative ‘values,’ and is steadfastly working to eliminate anything that deviates from them.”
On the other hand, Yenor argues for reforming Title IX to emphasize female-centric athletics like cheerleading and volleyball, rather than focusing on proportionality in male-dominated sports. His viewpoint is that “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.”
Armour’s column follows backlash she received for her comments about Caitlin Clark, an Indiana Fever star. Armour accused Clark of endangering minority WNBA players with her behavior on the court, later apologizing for comparing her actions to the murder of Emmett Till, highlighting the historical context of harm to Black individuals in defense of white women. She emphasized, “It shouldn’t need reminding this country has an awful history of Black people being harmed, even killed, in the name of ‘defending’ white women.”