Auto translate story 27Aug

Auto translate story 27Aug

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WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court rejected a Biden administration request to implement new regulations requiring equal treatment for transgender students, leaving in place temporary injunctions lower courts issued at the request of Republican-led states.

In April, the Education Department issued new regulations updating application of a 1972 law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational programs receiving federal assistance. The update included rules prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity, entitling transgender students to use locker rooms and lavatories according to their gender identity, and specifying that safeguards against sex-based harassment include gender identity, among other provisions in the 423-page document.

While the Biden administration has pushed to expand protections for transgender students, Republican-led states have moved in the opposite direction.

Half the states, largely in the South and Great Plains, have adopted measures restricting participation in youth sports to teams of the same biological sex, therefore prohibiting transgender students from joining teams reflecting their gender identity.

The 2024 Republican Party platform criticizes “left-wing gender insanity” and declares GOP candidates, including former President Donald Trump, would “reverse Biden's radical rewrite of Title IX Education Regulations, and restore protections for women and girls.”

Opponents of the transgender-student protections sued to block the regulations, and several courts issued temporary orders partially blocking them while litigation proceeds.

“There are two sexes: Male and female,” a federal district judge in Covington, Ky., Danny Reeves, wrote in one such case, in a June decision blocking implementation of the regulations in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia. While Title IX prohibited sex discrimination in “academic courses or programmatic offerings, scholarships, athletic opportunities, and other matters,” Reeves noted that the law allows certain activities traditionally segregated by sex to continue. Those include single-sex schools and dormitories, as well as fraternities and sororities, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and organizations like the YMCA and YWCA, he wrote.

The Biden administration said its approach was in line with a 2020 Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, which extended sex-discrimination protections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to transgender employees. In Bostock, two conservatives—Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the opinion, and Chief Justice John Roberts—joined the four liberals then on the court in a 6-3 decision for LGBTQ employees.

 

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“It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex,” Gorsuch wrote. Although dissenting justices suggested the decision would affect hundreds of other federal antidiscrimination laws, Gorsuch stressed the court was leaving disputes over locker rooms and the like for another day.

The Biden administration regulations, however, might bring that day closer.

“Just as Bostock holds that an employer cannot fire or discriminate against an employee simply for being transgender, [the Title IX update] clarifies that a school cannot expel or otherwise discriminate against a student simply for being transgender,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in court papers.

The states argue that regardless of Bostock, the Education Department skirted procedural requirements for issuing regulations, making the new protections invalid.

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“Longstanding regulations allow sex separation in bathrooms and sports,” Tennessee argued. If the Biden administration's position is right, “then sex-separated bathrooms and sports violate the statute too—and always have,” it says.