U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at the Tribal Nations Summit at the Department of the Interior on December 9, 2024 in Washington, DC, the United States.
Elisabeth Franz | Reuters
Biden administration’s Rule 9 Protections that expanded LGBTQ+ students across the country are being rolled back after a federal judge in Kentucky found that LGBTQ+ students exceeded the president’s authority.
In a ruling issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves struck down the entire 1,500-page statute, finding it had “fatal” legal flaws. After a wave of protests, the rule has been halted in 26 states. legal challenge By Republican states.
President-elect Donald Trump has previously pledged to end the rules “from day one” and made anti-transgender themes a centerpiece of his campaign.
The decision was made in response to litigation Submitted by Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Schemetti called it a rejection of the Biden administration’s “relentless pursuit of radical gender ideology.”
“With Biden’s rule fully rolled back, President Trump will be free to revisit our Title IX rules when he returns to office,” Schemetti said in a statement.
The Education Department had no immediate comment on the decision.
The Biden administration sparked controversy last year when it finalized the new rules. Expansion of supervision scope Article 9is a 1972 law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in education and also prevents discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. It also expands the definition of harassment to include a broader range of inappropriate conduct.
Civil rights advocates hailed the victory, saying it gives LGBTQ+ students a new way to fight discrimination. But it has drawn outrage from conservatives who say it could be used to protect transgender athletes in women’s sports.
The rules do not explicitly address sports and mostly detail how schools and colleges respond to cases of discrimination and sexual assault. one separate proposal Dealing with transgender athletes in sport was pushed aside, then Cancel After becoming the focus of the Trump campaign.
In his decision, Levis found that the Department of Education exceeded its authority by expanding the scope of Title IX.
Reeves wrote that there was nothing in the 1972 law that suggested it should cover more than it had since Congress enacted the law. He called it “an attempt to circumvent the legislative process and radically change Title IX.”
The judge also found that requiring teachers to use pronouns consistent with students’ gender identities violated free speech rights.
“The First Amendment does not permit the government to suppress speech or force the affirmation of beliefs with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,” Reeves wrote.
Reeves decided it would be better to repeal the statute entirely and revert to the previous interpretation of Title IX rather than enact certain aspects of the rule. He said his decision would “simply lead to a return to the status quo of more than 50 years before it came into effect”.
The biggest critic of the rule was Betsy DeVos, the former education secretary during Trump’s first term. “The radical, unfair, illegal and ridiculous Biden Title IX rewrite is gone,” she wrote on the social media site X.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, said Biden’s rule “betrays the original intent of Title IX by removing longstanding protections that ensure equity for women and girls.” .
“With President Trump and a Republican majority in Congress, we will ensure that women and girls have every opportunity to succeed in the workplace and in the classroom,” Cassidy said in a statement.
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