The Biden administration is taking fire from both sides of the political aisle after proposing a new rule limiting the ability of schools and universities that receive federal dollars to ban males from competing in women’s sports as 20 states have enacted such measures.

According to the Christian Post, The U.S. Department of Education released a notice of proposed rulemaking Thursday, indicating an intention to create a new rule to establish a “regulatory standard under Title IX that would govern a recipient’s adoption or application of sex-related criteria that would limit or deny a student’s eligibility to participate on a male or female athletic team consistent with their gender identity.”

Title IX is a federal civil rights law requiring schools to create equal opportunities for women and girls in education, including athletics. Federal law requires educational institutions to comply with Title IX in order to receive federal funding.

“If a recipient adopts or applies sex-related criteria that would limit or deny a student’s eligibility to participate on a male or female athletic team consistent with their gender identity, those criteria must, for each sport, level of competition, and grade or education level: (i) be substantially related to the achievement of an important educational objective, and (ii) minimize harms to students whose opportunity to participate on a male or female team consistent with their gender identity would be limited or denied.”

The proposed rule acknowledges that “fairness in competition may be particularly important for recipients in some sports, grade and education levels, and levels of competition.” The proposal adds that “some uses of sex-related eligibility criteria would satisfy the standard in the proposed regulation in some sports, grade and education levels, and levels of competition.”

However, the department characterized outright bans on trans-identified athletes competing on teams that correspond with their gender identity in all cases as inconsistent with the new federal policy.

“Criteria that assume all transgender girls and women possess an unfair physical advantage over cisgender girls and women in every sport, level of competition, and grade or education level would rest on a generalization that would not comply with the Department’s proposed regulation,” the rule states.

“Criteria that categorically exclude all transgender girls and women from participating on any female athletic teams, for example, would not satisfy the proposed regulation because, in taking a one-size-fits-all approach, they rely on overbroad generalizations that do not account for the nature of particular sports, the level of competition at issue, and the grade or education level of students to which they apply,” the proposed rule added.

In a statement shared with The Christian Post, Penny Young Nance of the conservative advocacy organization Concerned Women for America declared that the Biden administration “has put the final nail in the coffin of Title IX.” The activist predicted that “under this rule, equal rights for female athletes are history” because “those 50 years of women’s achievements can now go to men pretending to be women.”

Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, chastised the proposed rule as “outrageous” in a video posted to Twitter Thursday. He assured the residents of his state that “we remain firm in our values.” Oklahoma is one of 20 states with a law requiring athletes to compete on sports teams consistent with their biological sex.