Supreme Court upholds entire block on Biden administration’s new Title IX rule

washington – On Friday, the Supreme Court refused to allow the Biden administration to enforce portions of a new rule that includes anti-discrimination protections for transgender students under Title IX while legal proceedings continue.

The high court left intact two separate orders from federal courts in Kentucky and Louisiana that blocked the Education Department from fully enforcing the rule in 10 states. The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to stay some of the rulings, but denied the requests.

Four of the nine justices would have let part of the rules go into effect, according to the order, but all members of the court agreed that key changes in the litigation, including the new definition of “sex discrimination” to include “gender identity” and restrictions on same-sex spaces, could remain stuck.

The measure at issue in the litigation was announced by the Biden administration in April and expanded Title IX protections for LGBTQ students. The landmark 50-year-old law prohibits educational entities that receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex. The rule went into effect on August 1, but only in less than half of the states. Federal judges have temporarily blocked it in 26 states following legal challenges.

Court battles before the Supreme Court involved two groups of states challenging three provisions of the rule: The first recognizes that Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination covers gender identity; the second broadens the definition of “hostile harassment” to include harassment based on gender identity; and the third clarifies that a school violates Title IX when it prohibits transgender students from using restrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity.

A case was brought by four states, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho, as well as the Louisiana Department of Education. The second was filed by six states, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia.

In June, federal district courts in Louisiana and Kentucky found that the states could succeed in their cases and blocked the entire rule in the 10 states involved in the litigation. The Biden administration asked federal appeals courts in both cases to allow them to temporarily enforce part of the rule — the provisions that were not challenged — but each rejected the requests in split decisions.

In seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court, the Justice Department argued that the district court’s orders were “overbroad” because they blocked “dozens” of provisions of the rule that had not been challenged by the states, and that the court therefore lower not a discovery were probably illegal.

“The district court’s order would prevent the department from enforcing dozens of provisions of an important rule that implements Title IX, a vital civil rights law that protects millions of students from sexual discrimination,” Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in both requests.

She said the April 2024 rule is an “omnibus” measure and that most of it doesn’t address gender identity. Instead, its provisions include clarifications of the definitions of more than a dozen terms, including “complaint,” “elementary school” and “postsecondary institution.”

While she acknowledges that challenges to federal regulations before they are implemented are common, she accused lower courts of taking a “blundering approach” to preliminary injunctions in these cases.

“The injury is particularly serious here because Title IX is one of the foundational federal civil rights statutes guaranteeing nondiscrimination in the nation’s education system,” Prelogar wrote. “If the court does not grant the requested stay, the department will be unable to vindicate the critical protections of this statute across a broad swath of the country.”

But in the Louisiana challenge involving the four states, Republican officials told the Supreme Court in a filing that the Biden administration’s rule would “radically affect” schools, teachers and families.

They argued that the Department of Education took Title IX and its “promise of equal educational opportunity for both sexes and turned it into a 423-page mandate” requiring covered entities to allow male students access to girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities as well as teachers. and students to use the preferred pronouns of a transgender person.

“The Department cannot seriously dispute that a partial stay would sow widespread confusion. Teachers would have only days, at most, before school begins, to understand their obligations under the judicial blue pencil rule,” the attorneys general wrote republicans. “And the uncertainty and harm would affect parents and students alike.”

They said there is uncertainty about how a virtually deadlocked rule will work, leaving parents unable to make decisions about whether to send their children to public school.

In a separate filing in the Kentucky case, officials from the six states accused the Biden administration of forcing schools to spend “immense amounts” to comply with the new rule in just three months.

They warned the court not to “wreak eleventh-hour havoc – and needless diversions of valuable resources – on schools, students and sovereign states”.

In addition to the Louisiana and Kentucky cases, a number of other challenges to the Biden administration’s Title IX are pending in lower courts.

The Education Department’s Title IX overhaul comes amid a wave of laws enacted in Republican-led states in recent years targeting transgender youth. More than 20 states restrict treatments such as puberty-blocking drugs, hormone therapy or surgery for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. The constitutionality of one of those laws, in Tennessee, will be reviewed by the Supreme Court in the fall.

At least 11 states have laws on the books that prohibit transgender people from using bathrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity in schools, and 25 states ban transgender girls to compete on their schools’ women’s sports teams.

Jan Crawford contributed to this report.