WASHINGTON – Republican states are mounting a series of legal challenges to the Biden administration’s new expanded campus sexual assault rules, saying they exceed the president’s authority and undermine Title IX anti-discrimination law.
At least three federal lawsuits were filed Monday seeking to overturn the new rules. Cases were filed in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas, with support from nine Republican-led states. Tennessee and West Virginia also promised a “multistate response” on Tuesday.
The lawsuits are the first to challenge Biden’s new Title IX rules, which expand protections for LGBTQ+ students and add new safeguards for victims of sexual assault. The policy was finalized in April and comes into force in August.
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to the lawsuits.
At the center of the dispute is a provision that expands Title IX to LGBTQ+ students. The 1972 law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education. Under the new rules, Title IX will also protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Texas lawsuit called it a federal overreach that attempts to bring “radical social change” to the nation’s schools. Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that the 1972 law was intended to prohibit discrimination based solely on “biological sex.”
“This Final Rule tells States and other regulated parties that they must ignore biological sex or face coercive action and the loss of federal education funding,” the lawsuit states.
The states involved argue that the updated rules conflict with their own laws, including those that restrict the bathrooms and locker rooms that transgender students can use, prohibiting them from using facilities that align with their new gender identity.
A lawsuit filed in Alabama says the expansion conflicts with state laws on “harassment, bathrooms, sports, parental rights and more,” calling it a violation of “sovereign authority.” Florida, Georgia and South Carolina also supported the action.
The Biden administration’s new rules broadly protect against discrimination based on sex but offer no guidance regarding transgender athletes. The Department of Education has promised a separate rule on this issue at a later date.
However, in their lawsuits, the Republican states argue that the latest update could be interpreted as applying to athletics.
A lawsuit filed in Louisiana said the policy “cannot fail to sound the death knell for women’s sports.” Joining this process were Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho.
As a legal basis for the new rules, the Department of Education cited a 2020 Supreme Court case that protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from employment discrimination.
The lawsuits dispute that justification, saying the Supreme Court’s ruling focused on labor law and not Title IX. The ruling “involved an unrelated law that was enacted nearly a decade earlier under a different constitutional power” with no mention of “sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes,” the Texas lawsuit said.
Among other things, the lawsuits also oppose new policy changes that dictate how schools and colleges should handle sexual assault complaints.
The states say the new rules erode the due process rights of accused students and turn campus disciplinary boards into “kangaroo courts.” They ask the courts to immediately suspend the rules and annul them.
The Biden administration’s new rules were proposed nearly two years ago, with a public comment period that drew 240,000 responses, a record for the Education Department.
The policy reverses many of the changes implemented during the Trump administration, which added more protections for students accused of sexual misconduct.
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