Two conservative federal judges in Texas have blocked President Joe Biden's administration from enforcing new anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ students, preventing the rule from taking effect in the Republican-led state and a school district represented by a Christian legal rights group.
Thursday's rulings by U.S. District Judges Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo and Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth followed decisions by three other Republican-appointed judges in Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana blocking the regulation in 14 other states.
The U.S. Department of Education's rule interprets the ban on discrimination "on the basis of sex" contained in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 as also barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Education Department cited a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, holding that a ban against sex discrimination in the workplace contained in a different law, Title VII, covered gay and transgender workers.
Courts have often relied on interpretations of Title VII when analyzing Title IX, as both laws bar discrimination on the basis of sex.
But Kacsmaryk, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, in siding with Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and two professors at the University of Texas at Austin concluded that Title VII does not govern Title IX.
He said a strict reading of Title IX's text makes clear its overarching goal was to prevent discrimination against women in public and higher education, yet the rule would force Texas schools to no longer separate bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities based on biological sex.
"Title IX protects women in spaces that were historically reserved to men," he wrote. "In stark contrast, the Final Rule inserts men into the very Title IX spaces statutorily reserved to women."
He issued a preliminary injunction preventing the rule from being enforced in Texas. Paxton on the social media platform X hailed the decision as preventing the Education Department from "forcing radical 'transgender' ideology on Texas schools."
"The Final Rule undermines over fifty years of progress for women and girls made possible by Title IX," O'Connor wrote. "Worse still, the Final Rule endangers not only women and girls, but all students."
The district's lawyers at conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom had urged O'Connor to go even further and put on hold the rule's Aug. 1 effective date, a remedy the judge said would potentially have to be applied nationwide.
O'Connor, who had previously declared related guidance from the department invalid, deferred deciding that issue and requested further briefing by July 18 on how a stay would work in this context.
The Education Department in a statement defended the law as being crafted "to realize the Title IX statutory guarantee."
The cases in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas are State of Texas v. United States, No. 2:24-cv-00086, and Carroll Independent School District v US Department of Education, No. 4:24-cv-00461.
For Texas: Ryan Walters of the Texas Attorney General's Office, Gene Hamilton of America First Legal Foundation and Jonathan Mitchell of Mitchell Law
For Carroll Independent School District: Natalie Thompson of Alliance Defending Freedom
For the United States: Elizabeth Tulis of the U.S. Department of Justice
