Washington — The Biden administration’s Title IX regulations expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students were repealed nationwide after a federal judge in Kentucky ruled they exceeded the president’s authority.
In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves struck down the entire 1,500-page rule after determining it was “fatally” tainted by legal flaws. The rule has already been suspended in 26 states after Republican states filed legal challenges.
With Inauguration Day just days away, President-elect Donald Trump has previously promised to end the “day one” rule and has made anti-transgender themes a centerpiece of his campaign.
The decision was made in response to a lawsuit filed by Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skmeti called it a rejection of “the Biden administration’s relentless push to impose radical gender ideology.”
“Now that Biden’s rule has been completely nullified, President Trump will be free to review Title IX regulations while in office,” Skrmeti said in a statement.
The Ministry of Education had no immediate comment on the decision.
Some civil rights groups evaluated this ruling as a step backwards. GLAAD, a leading LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said transgender and non-binary students are among those who face the greatest bullying and harassment.
“Protecting our most vulnerable students makes our entire school safer and stronger for everyone,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD President and CEO.
The Biden administration sparked controversy when it finalized the new regulations last year. The rule expands Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education, to also prevent discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. It also expanded the definition of harassment to include a wider range of offences.
Civil rights activists hailed it as a victory, saying it gave LGBTQ+ students a new tool to fight discrimination. But it has drawn the ire of conservatives who say it could be used to protect transgender athletes in women’s sports.
The rules did not explicitly address athletics and mostly detailed how schools and colleges should respond to incidents of discrimination and sexual assault. A separate proposal addressing transgender athletes in sports was postponed and later canceled after becoming a focus of the Trump campaign.
In his decision, Reeves found that the Department of Education exceeded its authority by expanding the scope of Title IX.
There is nothing in the 1972 law that suggests it should cover more than it has since Congress created the law, Reeves wrote. He called it “an attempt to circumvent the legislative process and completely transform Title IX.”
The judge also ruled that teachers violated students’ free speech rights by requiring them to use pronouns that match their gender identity.
“The First Amendment does not allow the government to chill speech in this way or force speakers to affirm beliefs with which they disagree,” Reeves wrote.
Rather than carve out specific aspects of the rule, Reeves decided it would be best to scrap the rule as a whole and revert to the previous interpretation of Title IX. He said his decision “simply causes a return to the status quo that existed for more than 50 years prior to the effective date.”
Among the biggest critics of the rule was Betsy DeVos, who served as Secretary of Education during Trump’s first term. “The radical, unfair, illegal, outrageous Biden rewrite of Title IX is gone,” she wrote on the social media site X.
Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Biden’s ruling “betrays the original intent of Title IX by eliminating long-standing protections that ensured fairness for women and girls.”
“With President Trump and Republicans in the majority in Congress, we will ensure that women and girls have every opportunity to succeed on the field and in the classroom,” Cassidy said in a statement.
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