A U.S. District Court vacated President Joe Biden’s proposed rewrite to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 on a nationwide basis following a lawsuit filed in April 2024 by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and 5 other state attorneys general against the federal Department of Education.
This is a reversal of Biden’s expansion of protections for LGBTQ+ students.
The regulation inserted the prevention of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation in Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding discrimination based on sex in education.
The order issued Thursday prevents the rule from being applied anywhere in the country.
“I’m proud to have successfully defended Title IX from the federal government’s power grab that threatened to upend half a century of landmark protections for women and punish States for following their own laws,” Miyares said in a statement.
GLSEN, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, condemned the decision.
“This extreme and activist decision shows a stunning indifference to marginalized youth facing harassment and discrimination, as well as hardworking school administrators and principals who are working to build safer learning environments for their increasingly diverse student populations,” said Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the executive director of GLSEN.
The judge also found that it violated free speech rights by requiring teachers to use pronouns aligning with a student’s gender identity.
“The First Amendment does not permit the government to chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,” the judge wrote.
“The Biden administration’s 2024 updates to Title IX provided clearer guardrails than ever before to ensure that schools were prepared to support the needs of LGBTQ+ youth, and particularly transgender students,” Willingham-Jaggers continued. “We hope that immediate action is taken to appeal this unnecessarily broad decision and restore the updated regulations.”