The U.S. Department of Education said Friday it is scrapping a Biden administration rule about sex-based discrimination in education programs after months of Florida and other Republican-led states fighting the rule in lawsuits.
The department sent a letter to schools, colleges and universities that said it will use a previous rule about enforcement of Title IX, a landmark 1972 law that bars discrimination in education programs based on sex. [In 2020, the Flagler County School Board revised a policy that added “gender identity” to the list of explicit protections in the school district’s anti-discrimination policy. That wording may now be in question.]
The Biden administration rule, approved last year, drew opposition from Republican-led states largely because it extended Title IX regulations to apply to discrimination based on gender identity. The U.S. Department of Education said in a news release Friday that it will “return to enforcing Title IX protections on the basis of biological sex in schools and on campuses.”
Florida, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit last year challenging the Biden administration rule. A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments last month in part of the case involving a preliminary-injunction request.
In what is known as a “Dear Colleague” letter, the U.S. Department of Education on Friday said its Title IX enforcement decision came after a Kentucky federal judge struck down the Biden administration rule in a lawsuit filed by Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and other plaintiffs. Also, the letter cited an executive order that President Donald Trump issued after taking office last week that contradicted the Biden administration rule.
The letter said that in the view of the department’s Office for Civil Rights, the Kentucky court decision “expressed the proper textual and original meaning of Title IX, and it correctly repudiated the 2024 Title IX rule’s expanded ‘meaning of ‘on the basis of sex’ to include ‘gender identity.’”
The Biden administration issued the 2024 rule after numerous moves by Florida and other Republican-led states in recent years to pass laws and regulations about transgender people. Schools, colleges and universities that receive federal money are required to comply with Title IX.
In their legal challenges, Florida and other states contended the rule could force them to do such things as allow transgender students to use bathrooms that don’t match their sex assigned at birth. They alleged, at least in part, that the Biden administration had violated a law known as the Administrative Procedure Act.
Alabama-based U.S. District Judge Annemarie Carney Axon in July issued a 122-page decision that rejected a request from Florida, Alabama, Georgia and South Caroline for a preliminary injunction against the rule. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked enforcement of the rule while an appeal played out.
Though a panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court heard arguments last month, it had not issued a decision as of early afternoon Friday.
The U.S. Department of Education said in Friday’s letter that it will carry out Title IX enforcement under a rule approved in 2020, when Trump was in office during his first term.
–Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida
