A federal court has blocked new regulations aimed at protecting transgender students

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Department of Education from enforcing new rules aimed at protecting transgender students in schools, finding that opponents who sued to end the practice are likely to prevail once the case is fully heard.

The sweeping set of regulations released in April is the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX, a half-century-old law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools. The rules are scheduled to go into effect Aug. 1 and apply to all K-12 schools, colleges and universities in the country that accept any type of federal funding.

The regulation states that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation and would, for example, require schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity and to use the students’ preferred pronouns.

It was challenged in federal court by four states – Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho. The preliminary injunction only applies in these four states, although similar proceedings are pending in other states. Thursday’s decision was the first ruling in either case.

The order was issued Thursday by U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty, presiding judge of the Western District of Louisiana, who wrote that protecting “biological males” as if they were women undermines the purpose of Title IX. He said the order constitutes an “abuse of power” by the Biden administration.

“Title IX was enacted to protect discrimination against biological women. However, the Final Rule is likely to result in greater discrimination against biological women than before the enactment of Title IX,” he wrote. “(B)y allowing biological men who identify as women into locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms, biological women risk invasion of privacy, embarrassment, and sexual assault.”

The Biden administration’s order also lays out rules for how schools must respond to and adjudicate allegations of gender discrimination, including sexual assault, and the court found some of the new standards were too broad. However, it was the gender identity policies that aroused the most opposition and were the focus of Doughty’s agenda.

The Department of Education is reviewing the ruling but upholding the regulations, spokeswoman Vanessa Harmoush said. She said the policy was developed “after a rigorous process” to ensure that no person experiences sex discrimination in a federally funded educational setting. “We will continue to fight for every student,” she said.

The Human Rights Campaign, a group supporting the LGBTQ+ community, said it too would fight for the protections set out in the regulation.

“Today’s decision puts anti-LGBTQ+ hate over the safety and well-being of students in the state. This is MAGA theater whose dangerous goal is to weave discrimination into the law,” Kelley Robinson, the group’s president, said in a statement.

Opponents of the Biden administration’s regulation welcomed the ruling and pointed to other outstanding challenges.

“We are confident that other courts and states will soon follow suit,” said Bob Eitel, president of the Institute for Defense of Liberty, an advocacy group that served as co-counsel to the states challenging the order.

The Biden administration’s order set aside the question of how schools should approach the controversial issue of athletics and whether transgender women should be allowed to compete in girls’ and women’s sports. Work is underway on a separate regulation on this issue.

But in his ruling, Doughty said the consequence of the regulation was that schools would be forced to allow transgender girls and women to compete, which he said would “essentially reverse the entire intent of Title IX,” which was intended in part to provide girls and women equal access to sport.

The Biden administration has long argued that Title IX protections extend to issues of gender identity and sexual orientation, but the Title IX regulation is the first time the Department of Education has included that interpretation in a binding regulation.

In issuing the Title IX regulations, administration officials pointed to a 2020 Supreme Court ruling Bostock v. Clayton County, which states that gender discrimination in employment includes gender identity and sexual orientation. They argue that the same logic applies to Title IX.

The judge rejected that interpretation, finding, among other things, that the Supreme Court did not specifically address whether its reasoning extended to other civil rights laws. He also argued that the legal bases were different.