The Biden administration’s Title IX rules expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students have been struck down nationwide after a federal judge in Kentucky found they overstepped the president’s authority.
In a decision issued on Thursday, US district judge Danny C Reeves scrapped the entire 1,500-page regulation after deciding it was “fatally” tainted by legal shortcomings. The rule had already been halted in 26 states after a wave of legal challenges by Republican states.
Donald Trump, whose inauguration is days away, previously promised to end the rules “on day one” and made anti-transgender themes a centerpiece of his campaign.
The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.
Some civil rights groups called the ruling a step backward. Glaad, a leading LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said transgender and non-binary students are among the most bullied and harassed.
“Protections for the most vulnerable students make the entire school safer and stronger for everyone,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, Glaad’s president and CEO.
The Biden administration ignited controversy when it finalized the new rules last year. The regulation expanded Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding discrimination based on sex in education, to also prevent discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. It also widened the definition of harassment to include a broader range of misconduct.
Civil rights advocates hailed it as a victory, saying it gave LGBTQ+ students new recourse against discrimination. But it drew outrage from conservatives who said it could be used to protect transgender athletes in girls’ sports.
The rule didn’t explicitly address athletics and mostly detailed how schools and colleges were required to respond to cases of discrimination and sexual assault.
A separate proposal dealing with transgender athletes in sports was put on the back burner and later revoked after it became a focal point of Trump’s campaign.
In his decision, Reeves found the education department had overstepped its authority by expanding the scope of Title IX.
There’s nothing in the 1972 law suggesting that it should cover any more than it had since Congress created it, Reeves wrote. He called the expansion an “attempt to bypass the legislative process and completely transform Title IX”.
The judge also found that it violated free speech rights by requiring teachers to use pronouns aligning with a student’s gender identity.
“The First Amendment does not permit the government to chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,” Reeves wrote.
Rather than carve out certain aspects of the rule, Reeves decided it was best to toss the regulation in its entirety and revert to a previous interpretation of Title IX. He said his decision will “simply ‘cause a return to the status quo’ that existed for more than 50 years prior to its effective date”.