Major blow for Biden as judge scraps protections for LGBTQ students

A federal district court judge in Kentucky has struck down President Joe Biden’s effort to protect transgender students and make other changes to Title IX, ruling the U.S. Department of Education violated teachers’ rights by requiring them to use transgender students’ names and pronouns.

The ruling issued Thursday, which applies nationwide, came as a major blow to the Biden administration in its final days and to LGBTQ+ advocates. It comes less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, when the rule was likely to face more scrutiny from a candidate who took aim at transgender people in a culture-war focused campaign.

The Biden administration rule was released last April and aimed to protect LGBTQ+ students in K-12 schools, colleges and universities. The rule also conferred protections for pregnant students. The update to Title IX, the federal law that forbids sex-based discrimination in education, was expanded to include gender identity and sexual orientation.

In his opinion, Chief Judge Danny Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky wrote in his opinion that the education department could not expand Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. Reeves was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush.

Gender identity refers to the gender that an individual identifies as, regardless of their sex assigned at birth.

“The entire point of Title IX is to prevent discrimination based on sex — throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless,” Reeves wrote.

Louisiana was among the states that sued the Biden administration over the rule. Its case was pending in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals at the time of the ruling in Kentucky, which came in the case Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti brought.

“Louisiana is honored to have litigated this issue alongside Tennessee and our sister States,” Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement to the Illuminator. “This is a great day for America!”

Gov. Jeff Landry also praised the decision in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“Biden’s attempt to rewrite Title IX is dead!,” Landry posted from his personal account. “It’s a shame this even had to go to court, but pleased to see this win for women and girls across our Nation.”

Prior to Thursday’s decision, the rule had been temporarily blocked in nearly half of U.S. states, including Louisiana and Tennessee, as litigation played out.

While Reeves’ opinion references a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that limits the regulatory authority of federal agencies, it also notably rejects the rule on First Amendment grounds.

“The First Amendment does not permit the government to chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,” Reeves said, referring to sections of the law that could be interpreted as defining deadnaming and misgendering of students as harassment.

Deadnaming is when someone uses a transgender or nonbinary person’s birth name or “dead name” against their wishes. Misgendering occurs when someone refers to an individual by a gender they do not identify as.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.