{"id":37047,"date":"2025-01-10T01:17:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T07:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=37047"},"modified":"2025-01-10T03:21:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T09:21:25","slug":"judge-scraps-bidens-title-ix-rules-expanding-protections-for-lgbtq-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=37047","title":{"rendered":"Judge scraps Biden’s Title IX rules expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration\u2019s Title IX rules<\/a> expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students have been struck down nationwide after a federal judge in Kentucky found they overstepped the president\u2019s authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves scrapped the entire 1,500-page regulation after deciding it was \u201cfatally\u201d tainted by legal shortcomings. The rule had already been halted in 26 states after a wave of legal challenges<\/a> by Republican states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President-elect Donald Trump<\/a> previously promised to end the rules \u201con day one\u201d and made anti-transgender themes a centerpiece of his campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision came in response to a lawsuit<\/a> filed by Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called it a rejection of the Biden administration’s \u201crelentless push to impose a radical gender ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office,\u201d Skrmetti said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Education Department did not immediately comment on the decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biden administration ignited controversy when it finalized the new rules last year. The regulation expanded Title IX<\/a>, a 1972 law forbidding discrimination based on sex in education, to also prevent discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. It also widened the definition of harassment to include a broader range of misconduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civil rights advocates hailed it as a victory, saying it gave LGBTQ+ students new recourse against discrimination. But it drew outrage from conservatives who said it could be used to protect transgender athletes in girls’ sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rule didn’t explicitly address athletics and mostly detailed how schools and colleges were required to respond to cases of discrimination and sexual assault. A separate proposal<\/a> dealing with transgender athletes in sports was put on the back-burner and later revoked<\/a> after it became a focal point of Trump\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his decision, Reeves found the Education Department overstepped its authority by expanding the scope of Title IX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing in the 1972 law suggesting that it should cover any more than it has since Congress created it, Reeves wrote. He called it an \u201cattempt to bypass the legislative process and completely transform Title IX.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The judge also found that it violated free speech rights by requiring teachers to use pronouns aligning with a student\u2019s gender identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe First Amendment does not permit the government to chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,\u201d Reeves wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than carve out certain aspects of the rule, Reeves decided it was best to toss the regulation in its entirety and revert to a previous interpretation of Title IX. He said his decision will \u201csimply \u2018cause a return to the status quo\u2019 that existed for more than 50 years prior to its effective date.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the biggest critics of the rule was Betsy DeVos, former education secretary during Trump’s first term. On the social media site X, she wrote that the \u201cradical, unfair, illegal, and absurd Biden Title IX re-write is GONE.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said Biden’s rule \u201cbetrayed the original intent of Title IX by removing longstanding protections that ensured fairness for women and girls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith President Trump and a Republican majority in Congress, we will ensure women and girls have every opportunity to succeed on the field and in the classroom,” Cassidy said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

abcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration\u2019s Title IX rules expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students have been struck down nationwide after a federal judge in Kentucky found they overstepped the president\u2019s authority. In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves scrapped the entire 1,500-page regulation after deciding it was \u201cfatally\u201d tainted by legal shortcomings. The rule had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":37048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1169,1700,31972],"class_list":["post-37047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-biden","tag-judge","tag-scraps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37049,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37047\/revisions\/37049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}