Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a victory against the Biden Department of Education (DOE).
The lawsuit, filed in June 2023, pertained to the DOE’s transgender policies reinterpreting Title IX to include one’s “gender identity.” The changes would have “forced Texas schools and universities to allow biological males to use women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-specific spaces,” according to a press release.
If a school did not follow the guidance, they “risked losing federal education funding.”
A court order now states that the DOE “lacks authority to redefine ‘sex’ in a way that conflicts with Title IX.”
Paxton said of the victory, “Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks.”
“Threatening to withhold education funding by forcing states to accept ‘transgender’ policies that put women in danger was plainly illegal. Texas has prevailed on behalf of the entire Nation.”
According to the court order, the Biden administration “failed to follow the proper procedures” in policy changes.
“Rather than promote the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes, Defendants’ Guidance Documents do the opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX,” the order reads. “Not to mention, recipients of Title IX funding—including Texas schools—will face an impossible choice: revise policies in compliance with the Guidance Documents but in contravention of state law or face the loss of substantial funding.”
If the policy changes were to stand, it would “functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress.”
“That is not how our democratic system functions,” the order asserts.