Texas Judge Blocks Biden’s Title IX Protections for Transgender Students
The protections would ‘functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress,’ the judge says.
The Biden administration has gone a step too far in its broad interpretation of Title IX protections, a federal judge has ruled, asserting that protections barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity are unlawful and merely “advance an agenda.”
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the Department of Education exceeded its authority with its new Title IX guidance and blocked the department from enforcing it in educational programs receiving federal funding in the state of Texas. Judge O’Connor took the side of the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, who sued the department in June of 2023 over the guidance it issued in June of 2021.
“Rather than promote the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes,” the judge wrote in his 112-page ruling, the department’s guidance does “the opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX.”
Judge O’Connor added that the expansive protections would force Texas schools to “face an impossible choice: revise policies in compliance with the Guidance Documents but in contravention of state law or face the loss of substantial funding.” The protections would “functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress.”
Mr. Paxton said in a statement on Tuesday that “Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks.” The ruling is the latest legal victory for the attorney general, who has spearheaded several cases against the Biden administration on issues of immigration, vaccines, and abortion.
This court decision does not block the Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations issued in April 2024, which prohibit discrimination against gay and transgender people in schools and expand protections for pregnant and parenting students. Those are scheduled to take effect on August 1, 2024 in Texas and most other states.
