Biden's Title IX protections for LGBTQ students struck down by Texas court
A federal judge in Texas said the Biden administration improperly attempted to rewrite a federal law barring sex discrimination in schools by applying it to LGBTQ students.
A federal judge in Texas on Tuesday said the Biden administration improperly attempted to rewrite a federal law barring sex discrimination in schools by applying it to LGBTQ students.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, ruled in a lawsuit brought by the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton that legal guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Education three years ago was invalid because the agency lacked the power to adopt it and that it could not be enforced in Texas.
The guidance, which is not legally binding, said schools could be denied federal funding for discriminating against students based on their gender identity or sexual orientation, such as by requiring students to use bathrooms and other facilities that correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth.
A federal judge in Tennessee in 2022 had already blocked the Education Department from enforcing the guidance in 20 Republican-led states that had separately sued to strike it down. The Biden administration is appealing that decision.
The guidance was a response to a landmark 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said the federal law banning workplace sex bias extended protections to LGBTQ workers. The Education Department said the same logic applied under Title IX because the two laws use similar language.
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