A federal judge will temporarily allow some transgender discrimination in Tennessee and other states, skirting new changes to Title IX.
Those changes came in President Joe Biden’s first day in office with an executive order that added gender identity and sexual orientation to the anti-discrimination law. Biden later extended those protections to educational environments. The rules are set to go into effect on August 1. All of these changes came after the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibited companies from firing a person on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.
In April, Tennessee led a coalition in a lawsuit to block Biden’s new additions to Title IX. The group included Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), and “A.C.”, a 15-year-old high school girl who lives in West Virginia.
The states argued that the new law would chill free speech and religious freedom because teachers would, under the new rules, have to use a student’s “preferred pronouns,” according to the suit. The law would also mandate schools to open up bathrooms and locker rooms to all genders. The states also argued that the new rules subverted Congressional review and overreached into states’ powers to make such laws.
CEAI opposed the rules on grounds of free speech and shared private facilities. Its members — particularly educators in K-12 public schools — wish to “live and work consistent with their shared belief that God created human beings as male and female and that sex is an immutable trait.”
A.C., the 15-year-old student, said a transgender female was allowed to compete on her middle-school track team. The other student’s biology is an unfair advantage, A.C. said, and she did not feel comfortable dressing in front of the other student.
A federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs in a Tuesday ruling.
“There are two sexes: male and female,” wrote Chief Judge Danny Reeves, United States District Court of Eastern Kentucky. But Reeves said in a footnote that the statement was conceded by U.S. Department of Education officials in oral arguments. “The parties have agreed to little else.”
Reeves ordered a preliminary injunction against the new rules but only in those states who joined in the lawsuit. The stay extends to the Christian educators group and A.C. in those six states.
Tennessee schools and universities would have to let boys into girls’ locker rooms and other private spaces.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti
“If the rule we stopped had been allowed to go into effect on August 1 as scheduled, Tennessee schools and universities would have to let boys into girls’ locker rooms and other private spaces,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement. “If the rule went into effect, our schools would have to punish teachers and students who declined to use someone’s preferred pronouns.
“These are profound changes to the law that the American people never agreed to. This rule was a huge overreach by federal bureaucrats, and the court was right to stop it.”
Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, said, “We have a state government going into battle against trans and non-binary students via their pronouns,” in an opinion piece in The Tennessean Monday.
Government employees should not have more of a right to define a student’s identity than the student does.
Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project
“Students are better served by policies that respect their identities,” Sanders said. “They are at school to get an education without barriers, not to serve as an opportunity for adults to exercise virtue by choice.
“Experiencing an agent of the state using the wrong pronoun in front of one’s peers day after day is something students should not endure. Government employees should not have more of a right to define a student’s identity than the student does.”
