Advocates for women’s rights and fairness in athletics are celebrating a federal court ruling Thursday opposing the Biden Administration’s controversial push to rewrite Title IX. The ruling halted rules that would have required schools to allow biological men to compete in women’s sports and access women’s bathrooms across America.

“Huge win for girls and women everywhere!!!” a conservative activist and former collegiate swimmer, Riley Gaines, posted on X. 

The Indiana attorney general, Todd Rokita, echoed: “Huge win! Biden’s radical Title IX rewrite has been defeated in court again. For now, Hoosier girls and girls nationwide are protected from biological males being able to infringe on their private spaces.”

In rendering a decision in Cardona v. Tennessee, a federal district court in Kentucky ruled in favor of a six-state coalition opposing the Department of Education’s Title IX overhaul. It means there is no legal standing to allow transgender athletes to compete against biological women. At least for now.

“The court’s order is (a) resounding victory for the protection of girls’ privacy in locker rooms and showers, and for the freedom to speak biologically-accurate pronouns,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti posted on X.  

The changes initially written by the Biden Administration would have allowed males self-identifying as female to use girls’ and women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, play on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and access other female-only activities and spaces. Federally funded institutions that didn’t comply would risk losing millions in federal funding if they failed to comply.

In response, more than 26 states filed lawsuits to block the rule. Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee formed a coalition that filed the 2024 lawsuit heard on Thursday at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

In granting summary judgment in favor of the coalition and denying the Education Department’s cross-motion for summary judgment, the ruling blocks any attempt to change the meaning of sex in Title IX nationwide.

“(W)hen Title IX is viewed in its entirety, it is abundantly clear that discrimination on the basis of sex means discrimination on the basis of being a male or female,” the court said in its ruling. “As this Court and others have explained, expanding the meaning of ‘on the basis of sex’ to include ‘gender identity’ turns Title IX on its head.”

Keeping biological males from competing in sports with biological women was a campaign promise by President-elect Trump and a hot-button issue in many states.

“This is a victory not only for the rule of law but also for common sense and the safety of every student,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said. “The Biden administration’s Title IX revisions would have ended sex-based protections for biological women in all aspects of education, and this would have marked a retreat from the progress women have made.”

GLAAD, a leading LGBTQ+ advocacy group, called the ruling a step in the wrong direction. “Protections for the most vulnerable students make the entire school safer and stronger for everyone,” the president and CEO of GLAAD, Sarah Kate Ellis, told the Associated Press.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves is a death blow to the Biden Administration’s goal of offering more protections for transgender students under Title IX. The effort faced constant backlash from biological women who felt competing against biological men who identify as female was unfair.  More than 100 female athletes petitioned the Supreme Court supporting state laws that ban transgender athletes from competing against biological females.

One petition read: “A growing number of women and girls have been facing the humiliating and damaging experience of being forced to compete against males who identify as transgender in the women’s sports category. It’s hard to express the pain, humiliation, frustration, and shame women experience when they are forced to compete against males in sports. It is public shaming and suffering, an exclusion from women’s own category.”

While the Biden administration insisted the changes were not intended to address athletic eligibility, efforts to impose the revisions began to derail in August when the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to reject the administration’s emergency request to enforce the new policies in 10 states.