A federal judge from Texas has blocked an initiative by the Biden administration aimed at expanding anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students.
Concretely, judge Reed O'Connor said the government doesn't have the authority to implement such a decision, adding that it intends to push "an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX."
"To allow [the Biden administration's] unlawful action to stand would be to functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress," O'Connor added. "That is not how our democratic system functions."
Several states, Texas and Florida among them, sued the administration in recent months over its action. Texas Governor Greg Abbott had also directed the state's Education Agency to disregard the rule about sex-based discrimination in education programs, which was set to take effect Aug. 1. Abbott said that Biden's directions are "an abuse of authority."
Gov. Ron DeSantis had done something similar in late April, sharing a video in X, formerly Twitter, saying Florida's schools "will not comply" with the federal government's revisions to Title IX.
"Florida's response to Joe Biden trying to inject gender ideology into education, undermining opportunities for girls and women, violating parents' rights, and abusing his constitutional authority: We will not comply," the message said.
The federal government's guidelines seek to introduce a series of amendments to Title IX, a landmark 1972 extensive civil rights legislation that forbids sex-based discrimination in federally funded colleges and K-12 schools.
The Biden administration sought to broaden the reach of the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which clarified that Title VII, a civil rights statute prohibiting employment discrimination based on sex, also extended protection to gay and transgender employees.
However, there are contradictory interpretations regarding the scope of this ruling on school sports.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, the new rules under Biden's administration failed to specify whether transgender and nonbinary students could participate on a sports team aligned with their gender identity, leaving open the possibility for schools to apply exceptions.
"Taking those considerations into account, the Department expects that, under its proposed regulation, elementary school students would generally be able to participate on school sports teams consistent with their gender identity and that it would be particularly difficult for a school to justify excluding students immediately following elementary school from participating consistent with their gender identity," the U.S. Department of Education says in a statement.
"For older students, especially at the high school and college level, the Department expects that sex-related criteria that limit participation of some transgender students may be permitted, in some cases, when they enable the school to achieve an important educational objective, such as fairness in competition, and meet the proposed regulation's other requirements," the document adds.
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