(LifeSiteNews) — U.S. federal Judge John Broomes ruled Tuesday against the Biden administration’s manipulation of federal nondiscrimination language to force widespread acceptance of LGBT ideology on public education, adding Alaska, Kansas, Utah, and Wyoming to the list of states where it can no longer be enforced.
In 2021, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) under President Joe Biden issued a guidance to educators that its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) interprets Title IX, the longstanding set of rules against sex discrimination in public education, to also cover “sexual orientation and gender identity,” and will “fully enforce” this interpretation “in education programs and activities that receive Federal financial assistance from the Department.”
In February, the DOE submitted to the U.S. Office of Management & Budget (OMB) a finalized Title IX rule, later published in April, that expands the federal government’s prohibition against “discrimination” to now include under its umbrella “discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.” Critics have warned it has broad ramifications for sex-specific restrooms, lockers, and athletic programs, speech and conscience rights, and more.
Numerous states and groups have sued the administration over the matter, and on Tuesday, Broomes sided with the plaintiffs in the third ruling of its kind so far.
“At issue here is Title IX’s command that an individual not be discriminated against ‘on the basis of sex,’” he wrote. “Therefore, the court must determine the ordinary meaning of this command. Bostock, 590 U.S. at 654. After review, the court finds that the unambiguous plain language of the statutory provisions and the legislative history make clear that the term ‘sex’ means the traditional concept of biological sex in which there are only two sexes, male and female […] Defendants do not dispute that at the time Title IX was enacted in 1972, the term ‘sex’ was understood to mean the biological distinctions between males and females and conceded as such during the hearing.”
The decision follows similar rebukes of Biden’s Title IX move by U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty and U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves; Just the News notes that Broomes’ decision brings the total number of states where the rule cannot be enforced up to 14. The previously protected states are Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Additionally, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the administration’s earlier 2021 rule was unlawful, which, while not directly addressing the newest rule, is expected to bolster the legal case against it.
“We have had many wins in court, but to me, this is the biggest one yet,” Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach responded. “It protects girls and women across the country from having their privacy rights and safety violated in bathrooms and locker rooms and from having their freedom of speech violated if they say there are only two sexes.”
“Gender ideology does not belong in public schools and we are glad the courts made the correct call to support parental rights,” said Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, founders of Moms for Liberty, one of the groups that challenged the rule. “We will always stand up for the rights of parents and the protection of children.”
“The Biden administration’s radical redefinition of sex won’t just rewire our educational system. It means girls will be forced to undress in locker rooms and share hotel rooms with boys on overnight school trips, teachers and students will have to refrain from speaking truthfully about biological sex, and girls will lose their right to fair competition in sports,” said attorney Rachel Rouleau of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represented Female Athletes United as well as 13-year-old student Katie Rowland. “The court was right to halt the administration’s illegal efforts to rewrite Title IX while this critical lawsuit continues.”
The Biden administration’s rationale flies in the face of both the plain statutory meaning of “sex” in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the clear legislative intent of the lawmakers who drafted and passed it, as explained by Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel John Bursch. “There is little dispute that, in 1964, the term ‘sex’ was publicly understood, as it is now, to mean biological sex: male and female. After all, the term ‘gender identity’ wasn’t even part of the American lexicon at the time. Its first use was at a European medical conference in 1963. And no semblance of it appeared in federal law until 1990.”
The indoctrination of children with left-wing ideology on sexuality and other left-wing agenda items has long been a major concern in American public schools, from libraries to athletic and restroom policy to drag events to classroom materials to even “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas.
Nevertheless, the Biden administration has given uncompromising support to all major aspects of the LGBT agenda, including reopening the military to recruits afflicted with gender dysphoria, promoting gender ideology within the military (including “diversity” and drag events on military bases), holding White House events to “affirm transgender kids,” condemning state laws against underage “transitions” as “close to sinful,” promoting underage “transitions” (potentially at taxpayer expense) as a “best practice,” and trying to force federally funded schools to let males into female athletic competitions and restrooms.