The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order maintaining a block on new Title IX rules while a challenge is heard in an appeals court. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected efforts by the Biden administration to temporarily put on hold a federal court’s decision that blocks a central part of new Title IX rules for schools from going into effect.
The order by the justices allows a decision of the U.S. District Court in Eastern Kentucky to block the rules to remain in place for now. Reeves had sided with Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman and five other Republican attorneys general, including Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, in a lawsuit challenging the new Title IX rules, which aim to protect transgender students, among other changes.
A federal appeals court last month also declined to put on hold Reeves’ decision, and that court is hearing an appeal of Reeves’ decision in October.
“The Court expects that the Courts of Appeals will render their decisions with appropriate dispatch,” the Supreme Court justices wrote in the majority opinion.
The order also agreed to leave in place another federal court decision blocking the new Title IX rules brought separately by the Louisiana attorney general and three other Republican attorneys general.
Coleman in a statement on the order said the Republican attorneys general were defending equal opportunities for women and young girls.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is threatening to rip away 50 years of Title IX protections. … we are fighting to uphold the promise of Title IX for generations to come,” Coleman said.
Title IX deals with sex-based discrimination at any school that receives federal funding.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miquel Cardona previously said in a statement the new Title IX rules would have built “on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation’s students can access schools that are safe, welcoming, and respect their rights.”
The rules, which would have went into effect Aug. 1, sought to roll back Trump administration changes that narrowly defined sexual harassment and directed schools to conduct live hearings, allowing those who were accused of sexual harassment or assault to cross-examine their accusers.
Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia joined Kentucky challenging the administration’s order. In announcing Virginia had joined the lawsuit in May, Miyares said, “We cannot roll back Title IX in the name of false equity.”
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.
Greg LaRose of the Louisiana Illuminator contributed to this report.
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