Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued to stop an unlawful federal rule issued by the Biden Administration that destroys protections for women in educational institutions by mandating compliance with radical gender ideology.
Additionally, attorney generals in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho filed a separate lawsuit, arguing that the rule exceeds the Education Department’s authority, in part because it redefines sex to include gender identity.
“Texas will not allow Joe Biden to rewrite Title IX at whim, destroying legal protections for women in furtherance of his radical obsession with gender ideology,” said Paxton. “This attempt to subvert federal law is plainly illegal, undemocratic, and divorced from reality. Texas will always take the lead to oppose Biden’s extremist, destructive policies that put women at risk.”
According to a press release from the attorney general’s office, the Department of Education’s new regulatory requirements under Title IX expand the definition of “sex” to include one’s self-professed “gender identity.”Title IX is a civil rights law granting protections to women by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program that receives federal money, including K-12 schools, colleges, and universities.
It goes on to say that the new rule contorts these protections for women by forcing schools to accommodate the wishes of “men” claiming to identify as women (or “transgender”) to enter female-only spaces and join female-only organizations. This would force schools to permit biological males to use female restrooms and lockers. If schools refused, federal funding would be withheld.
According to Paxton, while the Biden Administration initially attempted to implement this agenda through informal agency guidance, the Department of Education has now turned to formally amending the Code of Federal Regulations. This rule violates existing federal law, ignores the Constitution, and denies women the protections that Title IX was intended to afford them.
“The Biden Administration has exceeded its authority and radically distorted the meaning intended by Congress when the law was made. Further, the changes would fundamentally transform the educational atmosphere of publicly funded educational institutions, forcing communities to capitulate to unscientific gender ideology and putting girls and women at risk in K-12 schools and on college campuses,” said the press release.
In addition, the new regulations promise to repeat the Department’s ill-advised 2011 Dear Colleague Letter, which had a detrimental impact on publicly funded education across the country, including in Texas. The Biden Administration redefines “harassment” to include constitutionally protected activity, such as using biologically accurate pronouns.
“Texas will not allow Joe Biden to rewrite Title IX at whim, destroying legal protections for women in furtherance of his radical obsession with gender ideology,” said Paxton. “This attempt to subvert federal law is plainly illegal, undemocratic, and divorced from reality. Texas will always take the lead to oppose Biden’s extremist, destructive policies that put women at risk.”
America First Legal is serving as co-counsel. AFL President Stephen Miller said: “America First Legal is honored to stand with the great Ken Paxton and the State of Texas in filing this emergency lawsuit to stop Biden’s war on women. Biden’s new Title IX regulation is a vile obscenity: it forces women and girls to share locker rooms and restrooms with men.
“It forces them to call a he, a she, and to pretend in every way that a man is a woman, humiliating, degrading, and erasing women.”
Previously, Texas sued the Biden Administration over initial guidance documents that attempted to force the same policies, to which Paxton issued a comment letter when the federal rule redefining sex based on “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” rather than objective reproductive biology was first proposed. Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Education Agency on Monday to ignore a Biden administration rule that expanded federal sex discrimination protections to include LGBTQ+ students. “Congress wrote Title IX to protect women. Biden, with no authority to do so, rewrote Title IX to protect men who identify as women,” Abbott posted on social media platform X.