A federal judge has granted an injunction against the U.S. Department of Education’s Title IX final rule for public colleges and schools across Texas.
Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational programs or activities that receive federal funding. Among other changes, the final rule redefines sex-based harassment as including harassment based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy and related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
The ruling makes Texas the 15th state where the revised Title IX regulations are blocked from taking effect. Texas officials have already instructed public colleges and K–12 schools in the state not to comply with the new rule, which is set to go into effect on Aug. 1.
In its lawsuit challenging the new rule, Texas argued that its public institutions would be forced to allow male students identifying as transgender into female-exclusive bathrooms and locker rooms. It also took issue with a provision it said would require public colleges to cover abortions in their student health insurance plans, as well as changes to how colleges handle allegations of sexual misconduct.
Judge Kacsmaryk agreed that the state would suffer irreparable injury if the Title IX regulations took effect.
“In summary, the State of Texas and its political subdivisions are on a collision course with the Final Rule,” he wrote. “Texas can either (1) comply and violate State law, local policy, and many of its employees’ rights of conscience or (2) reject the Final Rule and lose billions in federal funding for its K–12 and higher-education systems.”
In defense of the new rule, the Education Department pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, a case where a Georgia child welfare worker was fired after his employer learned he was gay.
In the 6–3 decision, the high court offered an expansive interpretation of Title VII, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination at the workplace, concluding that it’s unconstitutional for sexual orientation and gender identity to be considered as factors in employment decisions.
The Title IX changes are aligned with the reasoning behind Bostock, the department argued, since discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity “necessarily involves consideration of a person’s sex,” even if the term “sex-based discrimination” signifies only biological distinctions between male and female sexes.
Judge Kacsmaryk disagreed, saying that the Education Department “misapplied Title VII to misread Title IX.”
“Defendants invoke [Bostock] to rationalize the Final Rule’s inversion of the statutory text but do not adequately explain why that Title VII employment case controls this Title IX education case, which instead implicates women’s athletics, safety, and sex-specific facilities in a different setting: schools, colleges, and universities,” he wrote.
The Education Department didn’t respond by publication time to a request for comment.
