Washington A federal judge in Kentucky has declared that the Biden administration’s Title IX regulations that expanded protections for LGBTQ students were unconstitutional nationwide because they exceeded the president’s authority.
U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves declared the 1,500-page rule to be terminally infected by legal flaws and threw it out in a ruling on Thursday. Following a flurry of legal challenges by Republican states, the rule had already been stopped in 26 states.
Donald Trump, the president-elect, made anti-transgender themes a major campaign topic and earlier pledged to repeal the regulations immediately.
Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia brought the lawsuit that led to the ruling.
It was referred to as a rejection of the Biden administration’s unrelenting attempt to impose a radical gender ideology by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti.
Skrmetti said in a statement that President Trump will have the opportunity to review our Title IX standards when he returns to office because the Biden rule has been completely annulled.
The Education Department refrained from commenting on the verdict at first.
When the Biden administration finalized the new regulations last year, it sparked uproar. The rule extended the prohibition of sex-based discrimination in education under Title IX, a 1972 law, to include prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Additionally, it expanded the concept of harassment to encompass a wider variety of wrongdoing.
Civil rights activists celebrated it as a win, claiming it provided LGBTQ kids with further protection from discrimination. Conservatives, however, were incensed over it, claiming that it may be used to shield transgender athletes participating in females’ sports.
The guideline mostly described how schools and colleges were expected to handle accusations of sexual assault and discrimination, without specifically addressing athletics. After becoming a major campaign issue for Trump, a different proposal addressing transgender athletes in sports was shelved and later withdrawn.
Reeves concluded that the Education Department had overreached itself in extending the reach of Title IX.
According to Reeves, there is no indication in the 1972 law that it should cover any more ground than Congress has since it was established. He described it as an effort to totally change Title IX without going through the legislative process.
By mandating that teachers use pronouns that correspond with a student’s gender identity, the judge also determined that it infringed on the right to free speech.
According to Reeves, the government is not allowed by the First Amendment to censor speech or force people to agree with a viewpoint they disagree with.
Reeves felt it was better to throw out the entire rule and go back to an earlier reading of Title IX rather than separating out certain parts of it. He said that his choice would only result in a return to the situation that prevailed for more than half a century before it went into effect.
Betsy DeVos, the former education secretary during Trump’s first term, was one of the rule’s harshest opponents. “The radical, unfair, illegal, and absurd Biden Title IX re-write is GONE,” she said on the social media platform X.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s chair, Bill Cassidy, R-La., claimed that Biden’s rule violated the basic purpose of Title IX by eliminating long-standing safeguards that guaranteed equality for women and girls.
In a statement, Cassidy said, “We will make sure women and girls have every opportunity to succeed on the field and in the classroom, especially with President Trump and a Republican majority in Congress.”