Supreme Court lets Biden administration sex discrimination rule stay blocked — for now

The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked federal education regulators from enforcing rules designed to protect transgender students from discrimination over their gender identity.

The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene after numerous GOP-led states challenged its new Title IX sex discrimination. The high court refused to lift a lower court's block on the guidance, allowing it to remain in effect in the 26 states challenging it, as litigation advances.

A lower court placed a hold on the rule, which clarifies that "sex discrimination" as defined in schools includes discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy, with a number of Republican states suing to block it — even blocking portions of the rule that aren't directly targeted in lawsuits. The Biden administration had sought for the Supreme Court to partially lift that hold.

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But in a Friday order, the Supreme Court denied this request by a 5-4 decision.

The three liberal justices, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, as well as Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Gorsuch, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, is a hardline conservative on most issues, but was also the author of Bostock v. Clayton County, a landmark decision that found any employee of a company with more than 15 people has protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Gorsuch, breaking with the other conservatives, found that, at least for the purposes of Title VII employment law, it was functionally impossible to carve discrimination for being gay or transgender out from other forms of discrimination based on sex.