Judge Issues Final Ruling Against Biden’s Title IX Regulations

A federal judge in Kentucky last week struck down President Biden’s effort to expand protections for transgender students and make other changes to the rules governing sex discrimination in schools, ruling that the Department of Education (ED) had overstepped and violated teachers’ rights by requiring them to use students’ preferred pronouns.

The ruling, which extends nationwide, came as a major blow to the Biden administration in its effort to provide new safeguards for LGBTQ and pregnant students, among others, through Title IX. It arrived just days before those protections were likely to face more scrutiny under a Trump administration that is expected to refuse to defend them in court.

In a 15-page opinion, Chief Judge Danny C. Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky wrote that the ED could not lawfully expand the definition of Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity, as it had proposed last year.

“The entire point of Title IX is to prevent discrimination based on sex,” he wrote. “Throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless.”

The changes ran into immediate opposition from Republican states that filed legal challenges, including one brought by Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia that led to the decision last week. Through that case and others, the rule had been temporarily blocked in 26 states, while state attorneys general and policy groups opposing the changes fought the ED over their specifics.

Judge Reeves definitively ruled against the Biden administration, listing several reasons.

Citing the Supreme Court’s sweeping decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo last year, which limited the regulatory power of federal agencies, Judge Reeves wrote that the Biden administration had overstepped when it sought to enforce its new interpretation of Title IX through federal rulemaking.

But more significantly, Judge Reeves also rejected the revised rule on free-speech grounds, writing that it “offends the First Amendment” by potentially requiring educators to use names and pronouns associated with a student’s chosen gender identity.

“Put simply, 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,” he wrote.

Lastly, he firmly rejected the ED’s position that the protections for gay and transgender workers against workplace discrimination, established in the Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, should also apply in schools.