A US District Court judge in Kansas became the latest federal judge to block the Biden administration’s new Title IX rules that expanded protections to include LGBT students, preventing the changes in four additional states.
In an injunction issued on July 2, US District Court Judge John Broomes blocked the new Title IX rules from taking effect in Alaska, Kansas, Utah, and Wyoming, in the latest ruling fighting back against the Department of Education’s new rules.
Just two weeks earlier, a federal judge in Kentucky blocked the rule from taking effect in six states – Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Virginia – only days after a Louisiana District Court Judge granted an injunction requested by Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho, bringing the total number of states in which the Title IX expansion is blocked to 14.
Attorneys general in more than 20 Republican-led states have challenged the Education Department’s expanded Title IX rule, arguing that including transgender students would jeopardize the Title IX protections of women, including protecting women-only spaces like locker rooms and restrooms.
In the latest injunction, Judge Broomes wrote that under the proposed rule change, “an industrious older teenage boy” could claim to be a female just to “gain access to the girls’ showers, dressing rooms, or locker rooms” so he could watch his female classmates “disrobe and shower.”
Judge Broomes also noted that the legislative history of Title IX made it clear that the rule was designed specifically to protect biological women and not gender identities or sexual orientations.
He said the primary purpose of Title IX was to prevent “discrimination against women in education” and Congress enacted the statute out of concern about “the unequal treatment between men and women” in sports, scholarships, and admissions.
Kansas Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach said his office was “pleased” that the court reined in the Biden administration’s “vast overreach,” which he described as “dangerous” for women and girls and a violation of federal law.
