Attorneys general sue Biden administration over revisions to Title IX

by Nick Robertson - 04/30/24 7:59 PM ET

FILE – A luggage tag with a Southeastern Conference Title IX logo is viewed during an NCAA college softball game between South Carolina and Kennesaw State, March 1, 2024, in Orlando, Fla. Republican states are filing a barrage of legal challenges against the Biden administration’s newly expanded campus sexual assault rules, saying they overstep the president’s authority and undermine the Title IX anti-discrimination law. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)

A group of six GOP state attorneys general sued the Biden administration over changes to Title IX on Tuesday, the fourth such suit over proposed revisions to the anti-discrimination protections in two days.

Tuesday’s suit, led by Kentucky and Tennessee, claims that expansions to campus sexual assault rules overstep the president’s authority. It follows a pair of suits from nine states on Monday contesting transgender student protections.

Biden’s Title IX changes expand the legislation’s protection to LGBTQ students for the first time by protecting against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in addition to sex.

The suit claims the Title IX changes override states’ laws regulating school locker rooms and bathrooms and could put young women in danger.

“The U.S. Department of Education has no authority to let boys into girls’ locker rooms,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (R) said in a statement. “In the decades since its adoption, Title IX has been universally understood to protect the privacy and safety of women in private spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms.

“Federal bureaucrats have no power to rewrite laws passed by the people’s elected representatives, and I expect the courts will put a stop to this unconstitutional power grab,” he added.

The other three suits — filed by Alabama, Texas and Louisiana — make similar claims about the new changes. The legal challenges continue partisan conflict over gender issues in schools, which have risen to prominence in recent years.

“For 50 years Title IX has protected girls and women’s rights, but President Biden has abandoned those protections to appease the woke left,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) wrote in a statement. “This rule is not based in scientific reality. It redefines biological sex which will allow men to compete in women’s sports, violate women’s privacy, and put women and girls in dangerous situations on campus.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Monday that public universities in the Lone Star State won’t follow the changes if they are upheld in court, calling the changes a “ham-handed effort to impose a leftist belief onto Title IX.”

“You have rewritten Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they are girls and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity,” Abbott wrote in a letter to Biden.

Laws passed in more than a dozen Republican-led states prevent transgender students from using school restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity or require teachers and students to disregard a transgender person’s name and pronouns. Adhering to such laws may violate the new Title IX regulations, a senior administration official told The Hill, if doing so creates a hostile environment.

The Biden administration has yet to finalize a separate rule governing athletics eligibility. The proposal unveiled by the Education Department last April would prohibit schools from adopting policies that categorically ban transgender student-athletes from sports teams that match their gender identity.