The U.S. Supreme Court. (File/Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
States shunning new federal rules on discrimination in schools over sexual orientation and gender identity won’t be forced to follow them for the time being.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday to reject a Biden administration request for a partial stay that would allow some of the new regulations to take effect while lower courts deliberate disputes over protections for transgender students.
Multiple lawsuits have challenged U.S. Department of Education’s revisions to its Title IX policy, which deals with sex-based discrimination at any school that receives federal funding.
A total of 26 states, including South Carolina, have acted to block enforcement of the rules, with 22 of them already winning lower court rulings that stop them from fully taking effect.
Court ruling blocks new Title IX rules in schools, colleges across SC
Opponents of the policy argue the rules force unwanted standards for matters that are best left for locals to determine. They have also provided fodder in the continuing fight between Republican governors and attorney generals against the Democratic president’s pro-LGBTQ+ stance.
The Supreme Court’s ruling Friday was in response to challenges from Kentucky, which involves six other states, and Louisiana, which was joined by three other states and local school districts in its complaint.
“This means that Louisiana schools will not have to comply with the Biden-Harris administration’s demand that they let boys in girls’ bathrooms as our children return to school,” Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement.
The new Title IX regulations don’t explicitly require schools to open their bathrooms to students based on their gender identity. They do prohibit blanket policies that ban transgender students from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joined liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in dissent of Friday’s ruling. Their opinion centered on lower courts ruling too broadly when blocking all of the administration’s Title IX revisions.
The policy changes that haven’t been challenged include those for pregnant and postpartum students. For example, they require schools to provide lactation rooms for mothers and designated bathrooms for pregnant students.
“By blocking the Government from enforcing scores of regulations that respondents never challenged and that bear no apparent relationship to respondents’ alleged injuries, the lower courts went beyond their authority to remedy the discrete harms alleged here,” Sotomayor wrote.
In Louisiana’s lawsuit, Murrill contends the education department’s new sex discrimination policy “pervades all 426 pages,” justifying an across-the-board action to halt its enforcement.
Peyton Rose Michelle, executive director of Louisiana Trans Advocates, said Friday’s ruling from the Supreme Court undermines the protections Title IX is intended to provide “by enabling discrimination instead.
“It’s so disappointing to see public officials at all levels invalidating the dignity of trans people,” Michelle said. “This persecution must end.”
The Supreme Court’s determination has no impact on the states that haven’t challenged the Biden administration regulations, and the new rules will continue to apply there.
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