Freedom to Learn
Season 2 of the Freedom to Learn podcast makes the urgent case for returning education to states, communities, and families. In Washington, President Trump is challenging partisan teacher unions and federal bureaucrats by enacting a new K–12 scholarship tax credit, restructuring the Department of Education, and rooting out civil rights violations in schools. Each week, host Ginny Gentles speaks with policymakers and advocates about bold reforms that improve academic performance and shift power closer to students. Every episode examines what becomes possible when education is freed from union dominance and federal control. Produced by the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.
Freedom to Learn
RE-RELEASE: DFI’s Paul Zimmerman on Title IX, the RESPECT Title IX Act, & the Need for Congressional Action
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On June 30, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark victory for women and girls, ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox that schools may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex without violating Title IX or the Constitution.
DFI filed an amicus brief supporting West Virginia and Idaho and has been at the forefront of the fight to restore Title IX to its original promise. DFI filed the first-in-the-nation lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s unlawful Title IX rewrite and helped secure the first preliminary injunction blocking the rule.
But even after this important Supreme Court victory, the Title IX regulatory ping-pong is far from over.
This week on Freedom to Learn, we are re-releasing a June 2025 episode featuring DFI Senior Policy and Regulatory Counsel Paul Zimmerman. Paul explains Title IX’s original purpose of ensuring equal educational opportunity on the basis of sex, the law’s regulatory evolution and the policy whiplash of recent years, and efforts by federal regulators to inject gender ideology into schools while weakening parental rights, due process, and free speech.
The episode concludes with a permanent solution: DFI’s RESPECT Title IX Act. The comprehensive model law would end the regulatory whiplash by codifying enduring protections for women’s and girls’ sports and intimate spaces, campus due process, free speech, religious liberty, and parental rights.
DFI's RESPECT Title IX Act: dfipolicy.org/titleix
DFI Amicus Brief: West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox: https://dfipolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/BPJ-SCOTUS-Amicus-Brief-9.19.2025.pdf
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