Four Southern states are suing the Biden admin for the right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ kids

Four Southern states have joined together with four conservative organizations to sue the Biden administration over a recently issued rule banning anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in education.

Earlier this month, the Department of Education (DOE) unveiled new Title IX rules to address the needs of LGBTQ+ students. The rules interpret Title IX, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex in education, as a legal protection against anti-LGBTQ+ school policies.

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The idea is that it’s impossible to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity without taking sex into account, a legal argument that the Supreme Court has already used in its 2020 Bostock v. Clayton Co. ruling with respect to job discrimination.

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With the new rule, any school that receives federal funding will no longer be able to discriminate against LGBTQ+ students. This could affect states and school districts with policies to out LGBTQ+ students to their parents or ban trans students from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender. The new rules could also give students who face discrimination recourse in federal courts.

Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia allege in the lawsuit that the Biden administration does not have the authority to make this rule and also that it goes beyond the original intentions of Title IX, according to CBS News.

The states are joined in the lawsuit by the Independent Women’s Network, Parents Defending Education, Speech First, and the Independent Women’s Law Center.

“The role of Cabinet agencies is to interpret laws as written by Congress – not to redefine the meaning of words to suit a fringe group of activists,” said Parents Defending Education president Nicole Neily in a statement, which went on to claim the rule proves “the Biden administration’s contempt for families, trumping state laws which reiterate parents’ right to access information and make decisions about issues related to their children’s gender identity in schools.”

“By lowering the standard of ‘harassment’ to little more than a one-off expression of humor, satire, or parody,” Neily continued, “the free speech rights of every young learner in America has become subordinate to how the most sensitive student might interpret a phrase. This Title IX rule is both unconstitutional and immoral, and we look forward to vindicating our members’ rights in court.”

“We will fight very strongly against this rule,” added Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R), “just to ensure this does what Congress intended it to do, and that is provide opportunities to everyone and especially protect the security and fairness for our biological females.”

Moody also claimed the new rule “is really a radical departure from what Title IX was originally meant to do.”

The lawsuit alleges that the rule “conflicts with many of the state plaintiffs’ laws that govern public institutions of higher education and primary and secondary education, including laws involving harassment, bathrooms, sports, parental rights, and more.”

It continues, “The rule thus impedes the state plaintiffs’ sovereign authority to enforce and administer their laws and creates pressure on the state plaintiffs to change their laws and practices.”

The new rules, however, do not discuss transgender student-athletes and which teams they can play on. The DOE is reportedly planning to issue a separate rule regarding what Title IX means for sports participation.

In a separate lawsuit, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is also challenging the new rule.

Paxton’s lawsuit claims that Biden misinterpreted Title IX, saying that the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling was based on the phrase “because of sex” in Title VII, whereas Title IX is completely different because it bans discrimination “on the basis of sex.”

“Bostock holds only that Title VII’s prohibition on ‘sex’ discrimination prohibits employers from firing or refusing to hire individuals ‘for being homosexual or transgender,’” Paxton argues in his filing. He argues that discrimination against bisexuals is allowed under Bostock as long as an entity discriminates against both bi men and bi women equally. Bisexual people are not mentioned in that ruling. This bizarre legal argument was used in a lawsuit filed by a Christian conservative businessman in Texas in 2021.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered the Texas Education Agency to ignore the new Title IX rules, something that at least four other states — Louisiana, Florida, Oklahoma, and South Carolina — have done or announced that they would do.

On X, he argued that protecting transgender students takes away from protections for women.

“Texas will not allow Joe Biden to rewrite Title IX at whim, destroying legal protections for women in furtherance of his radical obsession with gender ideology,” Paxton said in a statement. “This attempt to subvert federal law is plainly illegal, undemocratic, and divorced from reality. Texas will always take the lead to oppose Biden’s extremist, destructive policies that put women at risk.”

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