1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Civil Rights Uniformity Act of 2017 . 2. Congressional findings and declaration of purpose (a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) Over the past half century, Congress has passed numerous civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex , a designation long understood to be grounded in objective biology up to the present day. There is no evidence that Congress or the American people ever understood the word sex or gender in civil rights laws to include subjective self-identification. (2) For years, advocates have pressed Congress to include a person’s subjective self-declared gender identity in Federal civil rights laws that prohibit sex discrimination. Congress has declined to do so except for the Shepard-Byrd Act of 2009 and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 where gender identity is defined as actual or perceived gender-related characteristics with gender , there referring to characteristics associated with biological males and females. (3) This demonstrates that when Congress wants to protect sex, it does so explicitly; when it wants to also elevate gender identity it does so explicitly