A U.S. district court in Texas blocked the Biden administration’s illegal rewrite of Title IX rules to implement radical transgender ideology in public schools, according to a court order released Tuesday. The ruling is a victory for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who argued the rules would have “forced Texas schools and universities to allow biological males to use women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-specific spaces.”
“Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks,” said Paxton. “Threatening to withhold education funding by forcing states to accept ‘transgender’ policies that put women in danger was plainly illegal. Texas has prevailed on behalf of the entire Nation.”
The court’s opinion, authored by District Judge Reed O’Connor, held that the Biden administration abandoned proper procedure by attempting to “functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress.”
“That is not how our democratic system functions,” O’Connor added in an important reminder to the Biden administration.
The court order also found that the Biden administration had placed public school officials in a catch-22 because complying with the new rules would violate Texas state law.
The court dismissed the rules as “void ab initio,” meaning they were invalid from the beginning because of the Biden administration’s overreach. In some instances, invalid administrative rules may be sent back to agencies for revisions, but the court found the Biden administration’s actions had such “severe deficiencies” that they were beyond salvage.
“Rather than promote the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes, [the Biden administration’s] Guidance Documents do the opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX,” reads the court opinion.
The court opted to vacate the rules and restore the existing status quo for Title IX, which does not include radical transgender ideology.
The order follows the Texas attorney general’s lawsuit against the Biden administration in June 2023. The suit sought to block the Biden administration’s extensive transgender ideology guidance issued to the Department of Education.
The lawsuit accused the administration of seeking to “radically transform educational institutions” with its Title IX rewrite. “Equating ‘sex’ with ‘gender identity’ or ‘transgender status’ for purposes of Title IX, would, at the very least, generally impact living facilities, locker rooms, and showers, in addition to bathrooms, at schools across the country — affecting students in kindergarten through the post-graduate level,” explained the lawsuit.
The Biden administration’s rules would have directed schools to expand sex-based discrimination protections to “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” This included investigations and the loss of federal funds for schools that restrict sex-protected spaces and activities, such as bathrooms and sports teams, to biological females. The Biden administration refers to this as “sex stereotyping.”
