Attorneys General Sue Biden Administration Over Title IX Revisions

A group of six GOP state attorneys general sued the Biden administration over changes to Title IX on Tuesday, the fourth such lawsuit over proposed revisions to anti-discrimination protections in two days.

Tuesday’s lawsuit, led by Kentucky and Tennessee, claims that expanding campus sexual assault rules exceeds the president’s authority. This follows two lawsuits from nine states on Monday challenging protections for transgender students.

Biden’s Title IX changes expand the legislation’s protections to LGBTQ students for the first time, protecting against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in addition to sex.

The lawsuit claims the Title IX changes override state laws regulating school locker rooms and bathrooms and could put young women in danger.

“The U.S. Department of Education does not have the authority to allow boys into girls’ locker rooms,” Tennessee Attorney General Skrmetti (R) said in a declaration. “In the decades since its adoption, Title IX has been universally understood to protect the privacy and safety of women in private spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms.

“Federal bureaucrats do not have the power to rewrite laws passed by the people’s elected representatives and I hope the courts will put an end to this unconstitutional power grab,” he added.

The other three lawsuits – filed by Alabama, Texas and Louisiana – make similar claims about the new changes. The legal challenges continue the partisan conflict over gender issues in schools that have risen to prominence in recent years.

“For 50 years, Title IX protected the rights of girls and women, but President Biden abandoned these protections to appease the woke left,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen wrote in a statement. declaration. “This rule is not based on scientific reality. It redefines biological sex, which will allow men to compete in women’s sports, violate women’s privacy, and place women and girls in dangerous situations on campus.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Monday that public universities in the Lone Star State will not follow the changes if they are upheld in court, calling the changes a “clumsy effort to impose a leftist creed on Title IX.” .

“You rewrote Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they were girls and to accept each student’s self-declared gender identity,” Abbott wrote in a letter to Biden.

Laws passed in more than a dozen Republican-led states prevent transgender students from using school bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity or prohibit teachers and students from disregarding a transgender person’s name and pronouns. Adhering to such laws could violate new Title IX regulations, a senior administration official told The Hill, if it creates a hostile environment.

The Biden administration has not yet finalized a separate rule governing athletics eligibility. The proposal presented by the Department of Education last April would prohibit schools from adopting policies that categorically ban transgender student-athletes from sports teams that match their gender identity.