
(HorizonPost.com) – The Biden administration’s new rule that includes transgender students in Title IX protections was blocked in six more states on Monday after a federal judge granted a request for a preliminary injunction filed by attorneys general in Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Virginia.
In his decision, US District Court Judge Danny Reeves described the new rule as “arbitrary in the truest sense of the word.”
Reeves’ decision comes just days after another federal judge in Louisiana granted an injunction requested by four other states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Idaho, and Montana.
Republican attorneys general in over 20 states filed legal challenges to the administration’s new Title IX rule, arguing that the policy would jeopardize Title IX protections for women, including in athletics and gender-segregated spaces.
Another request for a preliminary injunction brought by six other states – Arkansas, Iowa, North Dakota, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota – is still under consideration.
Monday’s decision was lauded by Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman who said the new rule would undermine women’s equal opportunities and that Judge Reeves made it clear that the Biden administration’s attempt to include “gender identity” was “unlawful and beyond the agency’s regulatory authority.”
The Biden Education Department vowed to continue fighting to include transgenders in Title IX protections.
In his decision, Judge Reeves said Title IX was aimed at leveling the playing field between men and women and the Department of Education’s expansion sought to “derail deeply rooted law” by “redefining ‘sex’ to include ‘gender identity.’”
The judge noted that the new rule would force schools to let biological males “into women’s intimate spaces” and likewise biological females into men’s spaces based solely on “a person’s subjective gender identity.”
Judge Reeves also cited the “serious First Amendment implications” of the new rule by requiring educators to use the pronouns of a student’s “purported gender identity” regardless of whether it conflicts with an educator’s moral or religious beliefs.
Reeves added that the Education Department is not permitted to impose a rule that “compels speech” or engages in “viewpoint discrimination.”
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