A federal court in Kentucky drove a final nail in the coffin of the Biden administration’s attempt to inject radical “transgender” ideology into the nation’s schools, rejecting a rule that radically reinterpreted Title IX—a 1972 civil rights law enacted to protect women from sex-based discrimination in education.
Riley Gaines, a college athlete-turned-activist who’s been an outspoken critic of allowing males to compete in female sports, called Thursday’s ruling a “huge win” for girls.
“Huge win for girls and women everywhere!!!” Gaines posted on X. “This morning, a federal court ruled in favor of reality. Biden’s Title IX rewrite has been vacated nationwide. Common sense is slowly returning.”
Biden’s new interpretation of the law would have undermined protections for female students by forcing K-12 schools to allow boys into girls’ facilities and activities.
A decision issued Thursday found that Biden’s Department of Education exceeded its authority when issuing a 1,500-page rewrite of Title IX that added “gender identity” as a protected class and threatened to withhold federal education funds from schools that didn’t comply.
U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves concluded that “the Final Rule and its corresponding regulations exceed the Department’s authority under Title IX, violate the Constitution, and are the result of arbitrary and capricious agency action.”
Put simply, there is nothing in the text or statutory design of Title IX to suggest that discrimination “on the basis of sex” means anything other than it has since Title IX’s inception—that recipients of federal funds under Title IX may not treat a person worse than another similarly-situated individual on the basis of the person’s sex, i.e., male or female.
A federal court in Texas already struck down Title IX guidance documents issued before the adoption of the proposed Final Rule.
The rule was set to take effect in August 2024 but was put on hold by the court when a multi-state coalition including Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and West Virginia sued U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in April.
Judge Reeves’ order can be appealed, but the Title IX rewrite has already been successfully challenged in multiple states, and President-elect Donald Trump promised to end the new rule as soon as he takes office on January 20.
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