How Gov. Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton vow to fight new Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students

Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, both Republicans, opened a double-barreled attack Monday on the Democratic Biden administration's recently adopted Title IX rules, which aim to protect survivors of abuse, LGBTQ+ students and student parents.

The changes to Title IX — a 52-year-old education law that protects women and girls from gender-based discrimination in all education programs, including athletics — were approved April 19 by the U.S. Department of Education to forbid discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender in colleges and elementary and secondary schools that receive federal money.

The rules, which will take effect Aug. 1, do not specifically state whether transgender and nonbinary students can participate in school-affiliated sports teams that align with their gender identity.

In a letter to Biden, Abbott served notice that he has given direction to the Texas Education Agency to ignore the rules, which the governor said are an "illegal rewrite" of the federal law that has been on the books since 1972, and he suggested that the update will apply to transgender athletes.

"The law was based on the fundamental premise that there are only two sexes — male and female," Abbott said in the letter. "You have rewritten Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they are girls and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity. This ham-handed effort to impose a leftist belief onto Title IX exceeds your authority as President."

Three hours before Abbott publicly released his letter, Paxton announced that his office had filed a federal lawsuit seeking to shut down the new rules before they take effect.

"This attempt to subvert federal law is plainly illegal, undemocratic, and divorced from reality," Paxton said in a news release, calling the revisions "extremist, destructive policies that put women at risk.”

When the new rules were handed down, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he intended to make it “crystal clear that everyone can access schools that are safe, welcoming and that respect their rights."

“No one should face bullying or discrimination just because of who they are, who they love,” Cardona said during a telephone news conference. “Sadly, this happens all too often.”

More: Why did Biden update Title IX? How it affects students, survivors of abuse, LGBTQ kids

Several other states governed by Republicans have also weighed in against the changes to Title IX. In Florida, state Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. signaled in a memo last week that he planned to fight the Biden administration on the matter, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

"The Biden Administration maims the statute beyond recognition in an attempt to gaslight the country into believing that biological sex no longer has any meaning," wrote Diaz, an appointee of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Officials in Louisiana and Oklahoma have also said they plan to resist the new rules.

LGBTQ+ rights advocates praised Biden's Education Department for updating Title IX, saying the new rules send a strong message that discrimination cannot be tolerated in schools and colleges.

“No child should feel unsafe in school, and the potential of the next generation is eroded when schools do not root out identity-based harassment and discriminatory policies," Melanie-Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLSEN, said in a news release distributed by the Congressional Equality Caucus.

In his news release announcing his letter to Biden, Abbott noted that the Legislature last year enacted Senate Bill 15, which prohibits someone who was assigned male at birth from competing in women's sports at Texas colleges and universities. A similar measure that applies to public K-12 schools in Texas was enacted in 2021.

Under SB 15, which supporters have dubbed the "Save Women’s Sports Act," transgender women will be required to play on men’s teams and transgender men will have to play on women’s teams.

Paxton, whose state office is anchored in Austin, filed his Title IX lawsuit in the federal district court in the Northern District of Texas. The attorney general has been accused of using the district's Amarillo court for "judge shopping" because one of its judges, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a conservative Donald Trump appointee, has been known to hand down rulings favorable to Paxton.

Last month, the Judicial Conference of the United States, which establishes policy for federal courts, said plaintiffs should not be permitted to choose which judges are assigned to their cases.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton say Texas will not follow Title IX changes