The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 opinion posted late Friday, has blocked the Biden Administration’s Title IX rules that would force schools that receive public funding to allow trans-identifying males into girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports.
The rules went into effect on August 1 for all but 26 states plus hundreds of additional schools, and expanded the definition of “sex” to include “sexual orientation and gender identity.” Title IX was originally implemented in 1972 and prohibited schools receiving public funding from discriminating against students based on sex.
In a 12-page ruling, the Supreme Court granted a temporary stay of the guidelines by siding with multiple other lower courts, which ruled against the Biden administration’s attempts to sever the sexual orientation and gender identity portions of the new rules from the guidelines as a whole, and allow the rest of the rewritten rules to go into effect. While the focus has been on transgender issues, the remaining rule changes eviscerate due process protections for students accused of sexual assault, protections that had been put into place under the Trump administration.
SCOTUS agreed with the lower courts, writing that “the new definition of sex discrimination is intertwined with and affects many other provisions of the new rule,” meaning it couldn’t be severed from the rest of the guidelines.
Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson, and Gorsuch – a Trump appointee – dissented.
The block is only temporary as the legal system works slowly, and the Biden administration is appealing decisions in the lower courts.
On August 1, the day the new rules were supposed to go into effect, former President Donald Trump promised he would repeal the Biden administration’s rules on “day one” of his administration.
Trump posted on Truth Social: “I WILL KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS!” and told radio hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton that he would do so on the first day of his administration.
“President Trump just pledged to all of us on @clayandbuck that men will not be allowed to compete against women in sports when he is elected president,” Travis said on X. “He promises to take care of it on day one and end Kamala and Biden’s new Title IX policies allowing this to happen.”
President Trump just pledged to all of us on @clayandbuck that men will not be allowed to compete against women in sports when he is elected president. He promises to take care of it on day one and end Kamala and Biden’s new Title IX policies allowing this to happen.
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 1, 2024
Twenty-six states previously blocked the Biden administration’s rules, with U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, calling the new rules an “abuse of power” and a “threat to democracy.”
“Title IX was written and intended to protect biological women from discrimination,” Doughty wrote. “Such purpose makes it difficult to sincerely argue that, at the time of enactment, ‘discrimination on the basis of sex’ included gender identity, sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, or sex characteristics. Enacting the changes in the Final Rule would subvert the original purpose of Title IX: protecting biological females from discrimination.”
Other judges ruled similarly.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge John Broomes, another Trump appointee, included a massive list of K-12 schools and universities across the country where the rules would also be blocked. That list came from schools attended by children of the defendants in that lawsuit, Moms for Liberty, and members of the Young America’s Foundation.
