Texas AG sues Biden administration over Title IX rules expanding protections for transgender students

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) sued the Biden administration Monday over new federal nondiscrimination protections for transgender students.

The Education Department this month finalized a sweeping set of changes to Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools and educational programs that receive federal funding, after more than a year of delays . The new regulations, which are scheduled to come into force on August 1, cover discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, a clause that has angered some conservatives.

“Texas will not allow Joe Biden to rewrite Title IX on a whim, gutting legal protections for women in furtherance of his radical obsession with gender ideology,” Paxton said Monday in a press release announcing the lawsuit. “This attempt to subvert federal law is clearly illegal, undemocratic and divorced from reality.”

The Education Department did not immediately return a request for comment.

The lawsuit, filed in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District of Texas, will almost certainly be heard by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who hears 95 percent of the cases filed in Amarillo. Kacsmaryk, the division’s only federal judge, has expressly opposed laws protecting LGBTQ people, including the Equality Act, which aims to make classes based on sexual orientation and gender identity protected .

Kacsmaryk in 2016, before being appointed to the federal bench by former President Trump in 2019, filed a brief in support of the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia, which had been sued by a 16-year-old transgender boy after he deny him access to the children’s toilet at your school. The student, Gavin Grimm, argued that the school discriminated against him in violation of Title IX.

Kacsmaryk in the brief, which was filed on behalf of eight religious colleges and universities and nonprofit organizations, wrote that “the term “sex” in Title IX should not be read to include the identity of genre”.

Paxton in Monday’s lawsuit called the Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations “vague” and “overbroad” and said they were based on a misunderstanding of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. County of Clayton, which found that employees are protected from discrimination based on sexual orientation. or gender identity.

The Biden administration has often used the 2020 Supreme Court ruling as a foundation on which to build policies that strengthen federal protections for transgender people. A rule finalized Friday by the Health Department that strengthens the Affordable Care Act’s ban on sex discrimination is also based on the decision.

“The [final Title IX rule] wrongly equates sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination with “sex” discrimination, Paxton wrote in Monday’s lawsuit, which was jointly filed with America First Legal.

Republican-led states across the country have vowed to reject the administration’s new Title IX rules, arguing that expanding the definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity will harm women and girls and punish people who refuse to use the name or pronouns chosen by a transgender person.

Louisiana also sued the administration on Monday over the new regulations, which the state’s Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill said “eviscerate Title IX.” Louisiana is joined by Montana, Idaho and Mississippi in filing the lawsuit, Murrill told reporters Monday.

All federally funded schools are required to comply with the final regulations as a condition of receiving government funds.

The Biden administration has yet to finalize a separate rule governing eligibility for athletics. The proposal introduced by the Department of Education last April would prohibit schools from adopting policies that categorically bar transgender student-athletes from sports teams that match their gender identity.