Women's groups, scholars, 20 states unite against Biden-Harris Title IX overreach

CINCINNATI – Twenty states, women’s groups, scholars, and other organizations have filed friend-of-the-court briefs asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit to halt the Biden-Harris administration’s unlawful attempt to change the meaning of the word “sex” to include “gender identity” in Title IX, a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the administration’s request to partially reinstate the rule change in two different cases, State of Tennessee v. Cardona and U.S. Department of Education v. State of Louisiana. The Supreme Court’s decision upheld two recent federal appeals court rulings, including the 6th Circuit’s, that halted the administration’s unlawful rules in the states of Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia, as well as Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho. In the first case, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys represent a West Virginia high-school female athlete and Christian Educators Association International; in the other, they represent a Louisiana school board serving more than 20,000 students. Now, as the case continues at the 6th Circuit, ADF and a wide variety of groups are asking the court to keep the injunction in place against the administration’s unlawful Title IX rule change.

“The Biden-Harris administration’s radical redefinition of sex turns back the clock on equal opportunity for women, undermines fairness, and threatens student safety and privacy,” said ADF Vice President of Litigation Strategy and Center for Conscience Initiatives Jonathan Scruggs. “The Supreme Court rightly affirmed the 5th and 6th Circuit decisions to restrain the administration’s illegal efforts to rewrite Title IX while these critical lawsuits continue, and now, dozens of states, women’s groups, and scholars have added their voices as well. Female athletes, students, and teachers across the country are right to stand against the administration’s adoption of extreme gender ideology, which would have devastating consequences for students, teachers, administrators, and families.”

“The Department says that sex-specific locker rooms—permitted under Title IX for the law’s entire existence—may no longer be sex-specific. Instead, schools must grant locker-room access based on gender identity, so that males who ‘identify’ as women may access women’s locker rooms,” wrote the Independent Women’s Law Center, Women’s Declaration International USA, and Concerned Women for America in their brief. “The Final Rule says so in a hushed way, permitting female locker rooms in ‘certain circumstances,’ but not circumstances that would result in excluding men who identify as ‘women’ from women’s locker rooms. So, under the Final Rule, locker rooms must cease to be sex-specific when a male concludes that using a men’s locker room is inconsistent with his felt sense of ‘gender identity.’ Put differently, locker rooms can be sex specific until males insist they can’t be. When locker rooms can’t be segregated by sex—sex, not gender identity—women bear the costs.”

“The Final Rule runs roughshod over the States’ sovereign interests and unique role in the context of education,” the brief led by the state of Arkansas and joined by 19 other states explains. “Many of [the]States’ own laws could become unenforceable if the Department’s unlawful attempt at preemption were allowed to succeed. But every challenge to the Final Rule thus far has resulted in injunctive relief against its enforcement.”

The athlete client that ADF represents in the case is a 15-year-old girl in West Virginia who was forced to compete against a male athlete on her middle school track-and-field team. The male displaced her several times, even taking away her spot to compete in a conference championship. The male athlete was also given access to the girls’ locker room, and the ADF client had to endure vulgar, sexual comments that the athlete directed at her. The male athlete has finished ahead of nearly 300 female competitors in three years of competition on the girls’ team.

ADF attorneys also note that Tennessee and Kentucky have laws that protect the privacy and free speech of teachers who are members of Christian Educators Association International and teach in schools covered by Title IX. But those state laws and the protection they provide to ADF clients and people like them would be wiped away by the administration’s new Title IX rules.

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

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