Mississippi, other GOP-led states sue to block Biden protections for transgender students

Mississippi is among five Republican-led states that filed lawsuits on Monday challenging new Biden administration regulations that bar schools and colleges that receive federal funding from discriminating against students based on their gender identity.

State attorneys general filed the lawsuits in federal courts in Louisiana and Texas challenging a U.S. Department of Education rule that extends sex discrimination protections in federal civil rights law to LGBTQ students.

The department said the rule issued earlier this month clarified that the prohibition against sex-based discrimination in schools and colleges that receive federal funding contained in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 also includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Title IX applies to both public and private schools, nearly all of which nationally accept some form of federal funding.

The department cited a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that a ban against sex discrimination in the workplace contained in a different law, Title VII, covered gay and transgender workers.

In a lawsuit filed on Monday, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County did not extend beyond Title VII to other federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination.

That lawsuit, along with a separate one filed by Republican state attorneys general in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho, argued the rule unlawfully interprets Title IX in a way that conflicts with the statute's text, which they said since its enactment has defined "sex" as a person's biological sex.

Courts often rely on interpretations of Title VII when analyzing Title IX as both laws bar discrimination on the basis of sex.

The states said that unless the rule was vacated, schools would be prohibited from distinguishing between biological males and females in athletic and educational opportunities and would be required to allow transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms conforming to their gender identities.

“Title IX has been a game-changer for generations of women,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in a statement, “For more than fifty years, it has given girls an opportunity to compete on a level playing field and offered them a fair chance to excel. The Biden Administration’s pursuit of an extremist political agenda here will destroy these important gains. What’s more, under this new rule, safe and private spaces for women to engage in healing, fellowship, and support will be torn away from them. The Administration’s legal theories are novel, at best, and they cut legal corners to push them through, and we intend to defeat this rule in the courts.”

The Education Department had no immediate comment.

Paxton filed his lawsuit in federal court in Amarillo, whose only active judge, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, is an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump and former Christian legal activist who often rules against LGBTQ rights.

Kacsmaryk, who gained national attention last year after suspending approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, had in 2022 in a different case concluded the Supreme Court's Bostock ruling had no effect on Title IX's "ordinary public meaning."

The case by the other four states was assigned to Chief U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee in Monroe, Louisiana, who has often sided with challengers to Democratic President Joe Biden's agenda.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Republican-led states sue to block protections for trans students