The Supreme Court has voted 5-4 to keep new regulations about sex discrimination in education on hold in roughly half the country. The court rejected a request from the Biden administration, with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joining the three liberal justices in dissent.
The regulations in question involve protections for pregnant students, students who are parents, and the procedures schools must follow in responding to sexual misconduct complaints. Notably, the protections for transgender students were not part of the administration's plea to the high court and remain blocked in 25 states and numerous colleges and schools due to lower court orders.
While the rules went into effect in other parts of the country on August 1, they continue to be on hold in the states where legal challenges persist. The issue of transgender rights has become a significant political battleground, with many Republican-controlled states enacting laws that restrict gender-affirming healthcare for transgender minors and impose limitations on bathroom use and sports participation for transgender individuals.
In an effort to address some of the contention surrounding LGBTQ+ student rights, President Joe Biden's administration introduced a regulation in April aimed at safeguarding these rights under Title IX, the 1972 law against sex discrimination in federally funded schools. The rule, which received a record 240,000 responses during its two-year development, prohibits discrimination against transgender students and emphasizes equal treatment in areas such as bathroom access.
However, the enforcement of Title IX remains uncertain, with federal courts ruling that the regulation cannot be enforced in most of the states that have challenged it. The Supreme Court majority declined to question the lower court rulings, citing the interconnected nature of the new definition of sex discrimination with other provisions of the rule.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in dissent, criticized the broad scope of the lower court orders, which prevent the government from enforcing the entire rule, including provisions unrelated to the specific legal challenges brought forth.
