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USA Today columnist Nancy Armour accused the Heritage Foundation of “coming for” Title IX on Thursday, shortly after facing backlash for her controversial Caitlin Clark column.
Armour cited the conservative think tank report titled “Title IX’s Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity,” released earlier this month, which criticized the modern application of the 1972 federal civil rights law barring sex-based discrimination in education activities or programs that receive federal funding.
The report’s author, Scott Yenor, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s American Citizenship Initiative, wrote that stricter interpretations of the law have enforced rigid equality in school sports to the detriment of both male and female student athletes.
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The Heritage Foundation put out a report criticizing the narrow enforcement of Title IX regarding female sports. (Wavebreakmedia / Getty Images)
“Title IX evolved from a seemingly modest anti-discrimination statute into a powerful engine of feminist social engineering, complete with proportionality mandates,” the Heritage Foundation report read. “The result has been two systemic distortions: a prejudice in favor of a male-normed competitive model for women’s sports and a prejudice against men’s non-revenue programs.”
Armour claimed that this signaled the organization is seeking to remove protections for female sports and roll back women’s rights.
“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,” Armour wrote.
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The USA Today columnist dismissed the idea that the Heritage Foundation’s efforts “will go nowhere” despite the law’s widespread support.
“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,” Armour wrote.
She added, “It’s also about enforcing a specific definition of femininity. It started with banning transgender women from sports. Now that that’s been accomplished, the Heritage Foundation and their ilk are going to try and make the rest of us women conform.”
USA Today columnist Nancy Armour previously faced backlash accusing Caitlin Clark of putting minority WNBA players in danger. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital reached out to the Heritage Foundation for comment.
Though Armour suggested that the Heritage Foundation is seeking to eliminate Title IX, Yenor instead argued in favor of reforms to the law that focused less on proportionality in male-dominated sports and more on opportunities for female-centric athletics such as cheerleading, gymnastics and volleyball.
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“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. Recovering an approach that accommodates the partly natural, partly cultural differences between the sexes can sustain vibrant women’s sports, protect and perhaps expand male opportunities, and contribute to a healthier, more humane social order,” Yenor wrote.
Armour’s latest column came after she received backlash for accusing Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark of putting Black and queer WNBA players “in danger” by flopping and berating court officials.
Armour later apologized for her “inartful comparison” of Caitlin Clark to Emmett Till’s murder. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
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“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. The WNBA’s All-Star Game this weekend is in Chicago, Emmett Till’s hometown, and a local art gallery is currently hosting an exhibit imagining his life if he hadn’t been lynched. While it’s incumbent on the WNBA to do more to protect its players, there also should be an expectation on Clark to recognize the wider consequences of her actions,” Armour wrote.
Armour later apologized for her “inartful comparison” of Clark’s actions to the murder of Emmett Till and has updated the column.
