RICHMOND, Virginia (LifeSiteNews) — Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has issued a new executive order to crack down on males in female spaces, in response to scandals that continue to plague Virginia public schools.
Executive Directive Fourteen instructs the Virginia Board of Health to “immediately take all necessary steps to promulgate regulations to ensure the health, safety, privacy, dignity, and respect of all individuals, especially women and girls, within legally permissible sex separated and sex specific spaces and activities, overriding irresponsible, unsafe, and unhealthy local policies.”
Specifically, these new regulations are to exclude biological males from female-specific athletic teams and competitions, and to exclude them from female spaces “where females are likely to be in a state of undress,” such as locker rooms, restrooms, and showers.
The order was spurred by a number of recent controversies, citing two instances of males watching girls change in locker rooms. This summer, Loudoun County Public Schools also suspended two male high-school students who objected to having a gender-confused female student in their locker, a move that was condemned by the U.S. Department of Education as a Title IX violation and blocked by a federal judge.
“Since day one, this administration has worked to protect the fundamental rights of all Virginians,” the order says. “These fundamental rights intrinsically require the assurance of health and safety for all individuals. Through collaboration with our federal partners, this administration is fighting tirelessly to prevent discrimination on the basis of sex and to protect the civil rights of our citizens under the constitutions of our commonwealth and nation.”
“It is an embarrassment and a tragedy that certain individuals continue to turn a blind eye to these clear violations of the law and of the health, safety, privacy, dignity, and respect of these students. This must stop,” the order adds.
Critics have long warned that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, and changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives potential male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status.
The issue is particularly acute for politicians in Virginia, where years ago the issue was magnified when Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent Scott Ziegler set off a national firestorm for allegedly covering up the rape of a female student by a “transgender” classmate in a girls’ bathroom due to its damaging implications for the LGBT movement. He was convicted in 2023 of “using his official position to retaliate against someone for exercising their rights” by firing a teacher who testified about the situation before a grand jury, but prosecutors eventually dropped charges related to allegedly lying at a school board meeting about having no knowledge of the situation.
Likewise, mandatory inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be fully negated by hormone suppression.
Youngkin was elected in large part as a backlash against perceived disregard for such concerns. Under him the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) promulgated a model policy that requires students to be addressed by their legal names and actual sex, as well as to use biological sex to determine which bathrooms, lockers, or athletic teams they are allowed to access.
But while Virginia law requires public school districts to abide by VDOE model policies, adherence to those policies has long been complicated by a lack of clear enforcement mechanisms, which has enabled districts to get away with flouting them. Democrats’ takeover of the state legislature in 2023 further dashed hopes of curing the situation through new laws.
