1. United States
2. Mich.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to oppose the Trump administration's "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government" executive order and related policies that threaten fundamental protections against sex discrimination for all women. This executive order, authored by May Mailman and signed on Inauguration Day 2025, establishes narrow government-wide definitions of sex based solely on reproductive biology. Legal historians and feminist scholars warn this approach could dismantle 50 years of anti-discrimination protections. UC Berkeley law professor Kathryn Abrams states the order "absolutely has implications for heterosexual, cisgender women" and suggests "that's their main target." UC Davis legal historian Mary Ziegler explains that by defining sex narrowly based on bodily differences, conservatives could argue that laws can treat men and women differently without violating equal protection. The implications are far-reaching. This framework could undermine workplace protections for pregnant workers, challenge women's access to military schools, and weaken Title IX protections that have required strong justifications for treating men and women differently. During January 2025 Supreme Court oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett raised concerns about this logic, asking whether states could exclude women from calculus classes if they claimed studies showed women's presence held back men's learning. The executive order has already impacted federal funding for gender-related health research and triggered investigations of schools by special teams at the Departments of Justice and Education. Some universities have fired instructors and censored curriculum in response. While federal judges have temporarily blocked many policies, the Supreme Court will ultimately decide these cases. I ask that you publicly oppose these executive orders and support legislation that protects robust anti-discrimination protections for all women. The term "biological sex" has become what legal scholars call "the new takedown strategy for anti-discrimination law," and we cannot allow decades of progress toward gender equality to be reversed.