In May 2024, Moms for Liberty and Young America’s Foundation sued the Biden Administration to stop its overhaul of Title IX—an unconstitutional attempt to gut Title IX’s guarantee that America’s schools afford girls the same opportunities as boys and protect girls and boys with sex-separate private spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms. Represented by Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF), the two organizations assert the claims on behalf of their members whose First Amendment rights are being trampled by the Biden Department of Education’s new regulation, which threatens to punish students for voicing their beliefs in biological sex and forces them to affirm views on gender fluidity, transgenderism, and queer theory.
They are joined by the states of Kansas, Wyoming, Utah, and Alaska in the lawsuit, which aims at stopping the Department of Education’s blatant disregard for the First Amendment rights of K-12 and college students.
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Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in schools and educational programs. It was passed into law by Congress, and it ensures that girls and women are afforded the same educational opportunities as boys and men, while at the same time recognizing that sex-separated facilities such as restrooms and locker rooms are necessary to protect their dignity and privacy.
But within days of taking office, President Biden and his administration started gutting these protections. Biden issued an Executive Order unilaterally changing the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity” and ordered the Department of Education to rewrite Title IX regulations to forever remove equal access and other legal protections. Soon after, the Department of Education proposed changes to Title IX, claiming it had authority to do so as part of its rulemaking powers.
The Department of Education sought to change the definition of “sex” to include gender identity, lower the standard for finding harassment, force individuals to use incorrect pronouns that are not based on biology, and centralize all investigative and disciplinary authority under one campus Title IX coordinator.
SLF challenged the Department of Education’s proposed changes through formal administrative public comment and testimony. But the Department of Education forged ahead and ignored the public’s concerns, issuing a final rule (the “Biden Rule”) in late April 2024, which Moms for Liberty and Young America’s Foundation now challenge in court. SLF and Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) are representing these parents and students free of charge in their fight for freedom.
In their lawsuit, the states and organizations argue that the Biden Rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act and separation of powers because the Department of Education changed Title IX without congressional authority; that the Rule violates students’ First Amendment rights because it will compel them to affirm other students’ so-called “gender identity” and discriminates against opposing views; and that the Rule violates other provisions of the Constitution, including the Spending Clause and the Tenth Amendment.
The states and organizations are asking the Kansas federal court to declare the Biden Rule unlawful and unconstitutional and to stop its enforcement.