What Did Justices Say About Change to Title IX?

Families, communities, and nation are stronger because the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. This law bars discrimination on the basis of sex in education.

According to Tyler O'Neil in an article published at The Daily Signal, the Supreme Court today upheld the temporary injunctions of two lower courts that blocked a rule put out by the Biden administration. The new rule sought to apply federal civil rights law to transgender issues in education that include school bathrooms and women’s sports. 

The Department of Education under the Biden-Harris administration issued new rules reinterpreting Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex in education. The changes force gender ideology on Americans in the name of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Tennessee and Louisiana are leading two lawsuits against the Education Department and its Biden-appointed secretary, Miguel Cardona, seeking injunctions to block the application of the law. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 5^th and 6^th Circuits granted preliminary injunctions, blocking the new rules from going into effect.

Cardona appealed to the Supreme Court, and the high court denied the emergency appeal Friday.

Cardona argued that, even if the courts granted an injunction blocking some aspects of the new rules, those aspects could be “severed” from the others, preserving the overall rules. The Supreme Court rejected that argument.

“In this emergency posture in this court, the burden is on the government as applicant to show, among other things, a likelihood of success on its severability argument and that the equities favor a stay,” the justices wrote. “On this limited record and in its emergency applications, the government has not provided tis court a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts’ interim conclusions that the three provisions found likely to be unlawful are intertwined with and affect other provisions of the rule.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling halts the Biden-Harris administration’s rules in the states of Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia; and in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho.

Tennessee, Louisiana, and others who joined the lawsuits argued that the administration’s Title IX rules unlawfully redefine sex discrimination and violate students’ and employees’ rights to bodily privacy and safety. They argued that a definition of harassment based on the creation of a “hostile environment” violates the First Amendment by requiring students and teachers to use preferred pronouns.

All nine justices on the Supreme Court agreed that Tennessee, Louisiana, and the groups that joined their lawsuits are entitled to interim relief from the administration’s transgender rules. Yet four of the justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented, saying that the injunctions blocking the entire Title IX rules are overbroad….

As Alliance Defending Freedom explained, the Education Department’s rules would force schools to “allow males who claim to identify as female to enter girls’ private spaces such as restrooms, locker rooms, and showers; to participate in girls’ physical education classes; and – despite logically inconsistent disclaimers saying otherwise – to play on girls’ sports teams.”

Due to the ruling by the justices on the Supreme Court, girls and women will be protected from sharing their private places with biological males. When girls and women are protected from intrusion and danger, families, communities, and nations are stronger.