WASHINGTON — of the Biden administration Title IX regulations Expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students statewide has been halted after a federal judge in Kentucky found it overstepped the president’s authority.
In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves threw out the entire 1,500-page rule after ruling it was “grossly” tainted by legal deficiencies. The rule was already stopped in 26 states after a wave legal challenges Republican states.
President-elect Donald Trump he previously promised to end the rules “on day one” and made anti-transgender issues a focus of his campaign.
Decision a the case Presented by Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti condemned the Biden administration’s “relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology.”
“With the Biden rule completely void, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office,” Skrmetti said in a statement.
The Department of Education did not immediately comment on the decision.
The Biden administration sparked controversy when it finalized the new rules last year. The regulations were expanded Title IXthe 1972 law that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in education, also to prevent discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. It also broadened the definition of harassment to include a wider range of misconduct.
Civil rights advocates hailed it as a victory, saying it gave LGBTQ+ students new remedies against discrimination. But it drew the ire of conservatives, who said it could be used to protect transgender athletes in girls’ sports.
The rules did not specifically address athletics and, in particular, detailed how schools and universities should respond to cases of discrimination and sexual assault. A separate proposal dealing with transgender athletes in sports was put on the back burner and later canceled After becoming a focal point of Trump’s campaign.
In his decision, Reeves found that the Department of Education exceeded its authority under Article IX. Expanding the scope of the title.
Nothing in the 1972 law suggests it should cover more than Congress has since created, Reeves wrote. “Bypassing the legislative process and IX. He considered it an attempt to completely transform the title.
The judge also found that requiring teachers to use pronouns that match a student’s gender identity violated free speech rights.
“The First Amendment does not allow the government to chill speech or compel the assertion of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this way,” Reeves wrote.
Instead of working on certain aspects of the rule, Reeves decided it was better to toss the rule in its entirety and replace it with Title IX. Returning to a previous interpretation of the title. He said his decision “will only result in a return to the status quo that existed more than 50 years before the effective date.”
Among the rule’s biggest critics was Betsy DeVos, a former education secretary during Trump’s first term. On social media site X, he wrote that “the radical, unfair, illegal and absurd rewrite of Title IX is GONE.”
Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Biden’s rule “betrayed the original intent of Title IX by removing long-standing protections that guaranteed justice for women and girls.”
“With President Trump and the Republican majority in Congress, we will ensure that women and girls have every opportunity to succeed on the field and in the classroom,” Cassidy said in a statement.
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