Biden administration admits defeat by withdrawing 7 woke rule changes

The Biden administration withdrew seven far-left proposed rules at the end of December, potentially due to receiving hundreds of thousands of critical public comments.

The withdrawals are being hailed as wins by conservatives, who have submitted comments against the rules, which would have compelled allowing male participation in girls sports, prohibited religious exemptions for birth control coverage, taken federal funding away from pregnancy resource centers, and more.

“On balance, withdrawing these rules is a win for everyone who submitted comments opposing them,” Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Rachel Morrison told The Daily Signal. “It means these bad policy proposals by the Biden administration will not go into effect.”

“It won’t require Congress to expend political capital to issue a [Congressional Review Act], it won’t take time away from other important things that Congress is doing, and there doesn’t need to be litigation by any advocates on these rules,” Morrison explained, “which allows them to have time and resources spent towards other things as well.”

The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to invalidate finalized rules at the end of an administration. If the Biden administration had finalized the rules, the Republican-majority Congress would have been able to effectively veto them, and Democrats wouldn’t have been allowed to submit the same rules in the future.

The Biden administration’s intention in withdrawing the rules could be to ensure they can be resubmitted when Democrats regain control of Congress and the presidency.

“Any rule finalized within five or six months of the new Congress could be subject to the Congressional Review Act, and if Congress eliminates a rule based on the Congressional Review Act, it becomes a permanent elimination,” Matt Bowman, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal. “No future administration can reimpose the rule.”

The intention also could be to ensure incoming President Donald Trump cannot adapt the Biden-era rules for his own ends.

“It takes away that opportunity to finalize a rule that changes it substantially from what the Biden administration was trying to achieve, in line with the Trump administration’s response to the comments,” Morrison explained.

It’s also likely the Biden administration simply ran out of time to respond to all critical comments, which is a required part of the rulemaking process.

“The more critical comments that there are, the more time it takes the agency to respond coherently to those comments,” Morrison said.

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget and the White House did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.

Regardless of the intentions, the withdrawals are a victory for conservatives because they eliminate the possibility of the far-left rules’ adoption.

Here are the rules withdrawn by the Biden administration:

1. Transgenders in Sports

The transgender sports rule would have forced schools receiving federal funds to allow boys and men to compete in girls and women’s sports if they claim to identify as females.

The rule received more than 150,000 public comments, both from advocates of biological sex on the Right and pro-transgender members of the Left who thought the rule was not far-reaching enough.

In the official withdrawal notice, the Department of Education noted that “there are multiple pending lawsuits related to the application of Title IX in the context of gender identity, including lawsuits related to Title IX’s application to athletic eligibility criteria in a variety of factual contexts.”

The withdrawal comes in the context of a number of lawsuits against a previous rule change that went into effect on Aug. 1.

In that previous rule, the Department of Education reinterpreted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex in education. The changes force gender ideology on Americans in the name of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

2. Birth Control Coverage Mandate

The Biden Department of Health and Human Services’ contraception rule would have prohibited employers from claiming an exemption to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate based on “non-religious moral objections.”

“[I]n light of the volume and breadth of scope of the comments received, [HHS and the departments of Treasury and Labor] want to further consider the proposals made in the proposed rules,” the withdrawal notice said.

An HHS press release in October said the former rule would require “most group health plans and health insurance issuers” to cover over-the-counter methods of birth control, such as emergency contraception and pills “without cost-sharing or requiring a prescription.”

The proposal also required insurance plans to cover “a broader array” of birth control pills and intrauterine devices, or IUDs, the press release said. Right now, plans must cover only one drug in different categories of contraception methods.

3. Pregnancy Center Funding

The Biden Department of Health and Human Services proposed a rule change in December 2023 to make pregnancy resource centers ineligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds.

The rule change would have prohibited states from sending federal funds earmarked to prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies to pregnancy resource centers.

The Biden administration argued that pregnancy resource centers should not be eligible for TANF funds because the centers help women after they become pregnant, instead of focusing on pregnancy prevention.

Pregnancy resource centers—which have repeatedly been targeted, ignored, or otherwise undermined by the Biden-Harris Justice Department—provide free counseling, resources, and material assistance to women in unplanned pregnancies.

4. Free Speech for Religious Student Groups

The Biden administration attempted to repeal a Trump-era rule that ensured religious student organizations at public universities can operate free from school interference.

The now-withdrawn rule would have rescinded the Trump administration rule that declared that public colleges and universities “shall not deny to any student organization whose stated mission is religious in nature” any “right, benefit, or privilege that is otherwise afforded to other student organizations” due to “the religious student organization’s beliefs, practices, policies, speech, membership standards, or leadership standards, which are informed by sincerely held religious beliefs.”

The Trump administration’s enactment of the Free Inquiry Rule followed years of public universities “delisting” religious student groups that restricted leadership roles to members of their religion.

The Biden proposal to rescind the Free Inquiry Rule received 58,000 comments. The notice of withdrawal pointed to “the concerns raised by commenters both in support of and in opposition to” the proposal as well as “the forthcoming change in administration” and “the significant resources needed to review and consider all relevant matters presented in the public comments” as the reasons why it was withdrawn.

5. Registered Apprenticeships DEI Requirements

The Department of Labor’s proposed rule on registered apprenticeships would have imposed diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements on the Registered Apprenticeship Program, a workforce training initiative.

That would have required states and businesses overseeing apprenticeship programs to provide “equitable” facilities like gender-neutral bathrooms and would have added diversity-related reporting requirements.

That would have imposed a significant extra cost on the program, preventing small or medium-sized business from affording apprenticeship programs.

According to the Federal Register’s withdrawal notice, commenters raised questions on “the impact and value” of the proposed changes “that would benefit from more outreach and dialogue with interested parties and the regulated community before it develops a new regulatory proposal.”

6 and 7. LGBTQ+ ‘Discrimination’ for Grants, Contracts

The Biden administration withdrew two State Department proposed rules that would have prohibited LGBTQ+ “discrimination” in foreign assistance—one for award recipients and subrecipients and the other for contractors and subcontractors.

The rules would have prohibited discrimination based on “sex,” as well as “gender,” “gender identity or expression,” and “sex characteristics.”

According to Morrison, the administrative law expert, rather than achieving “effective, compressive, and sustainable” foreign assistance, as proposed, “the rules would impose undefined and confusing nondiscrimination requirements.”

“The rules would decimate the pool of foreign assistance providers—both American and foreign partners—by forcing faith-based and other providers to choose between providing assistance to beneficiaries and no longer being able to hire employees that align with their sincerely held religious beliefs or convictions,” Morrison wrote. “The loss of these partners will impede the effective delivery of foreign aid and thwart the U.S. government’s foreign policy objectives.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]