Federal Judge Blocks Biden's New Title IX Rules in Six More States

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Facts

  • A federal district judge in Kentucky granted on Monday a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration's changes to Title IX, which would expand protections to LGBTQ+ students, in six additional states.1
  • Enforcement is now blocked in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, with earlier rulings blocking it in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Texas.2
  • This comes as Chief Judge Danny C. Reeves said in his ruling that the change in the 1972 federal civil rights law barring sex-based discrimination in education and athletics to encompass LGBTQ+ students was 'arbitrary and capricious.'3
  • He wrote that new rules redefining sex-based protections to include gender identity would conflict with Title IX and 'the broader guarantee of education protection for all students' by mandating schools to permit 'biological men into women's intimate spaces, and women into men's.'4
  • The Alliance Defending Freedom filed the lawsuit, State of Tennessee [et al.] v. Cardona, on behalf of a 15-year-old girl and a Christian educators association after a trans track athlete was allowed to compete against middle school girls.5
  • Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court passed up a chance to intervene in the debate over whether transgender students have a legal right to use school bathrooms that match their gender identity.6

Sources: 1PBS NewsHour, 2Forbes, 3Lexington Herald-Leader, 4Kentucky Today, 5FOX News and 6Bloomberg Law News.

Narratives

  • Democratic narrative, as provided by Bay Area Reporter. The GOP has used the transgender community as a scapegoat, as basic protections for the LGBTQ+ community come under repeated assault. This change would grant no special privileges to any group and would merely extend to trans students the rights that everyone else is entitled to have. The Title IX change would obligate schools to protect LGBTQ+ students and ensure they are treated fairly.
  • Republican narrative, as provided by The New York Sun. Equating biological sex-based categories with gender identity is illogical and only serves the purveyors of woke gender ideology. There are biological differences between the sexes, and pretending like they don't exist will obliterate Title IX as it will lead to the erasure of women's opportunities and protections. This ruling protects women's rights.

Predictions