(LifeSiteNews) – Outgoing President Joe Biden’s controversial pro-LGBT Title IX rules were an illegal breach of his lawful authority, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves ruled on Thursday in a decision striking down the policy nationwide.
In 2021, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) under Biden issued a guidance to educators that its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) interprets Title IX, the longstanding set of rules against sex discrimination in public education, to also cover “sexual orientation and gender identity” and will “fully enforce” this interpretation “in education programs and activities that receive Federal financial assistance from the Department.”
In February 2024, the DOE submitted to the U.S. Office of Management & Budget (OMB) a finalized Title IX rule, later published in April, that expanded the federal government’s prohibition against “discrimination” to now include under its umbrella so-called “discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.”
Critics have warned it has broad ramifications for sex-specific restrooms, lockers, and athletic programs, speech and conscience rights, and more; and multiple states and groups sued the administration over the matter, prompting several judges to side against the Biden administration in several jurisdictions.
The Associated Press reports that Reeves found the move broadened the scope of Title IX beyond its legislative intent, accusing the White House of an “attempt to bypass the legislative process and completely transform Title IX” as well as to “chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,” in violation of the First Amendment.
The ruling frees every school in the nation from a federal requirement to conform to LGBT ideology and strikes down a set of rules that returning President Donald Trump had pledged to reverse by executive order.
A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence and that “transition” procedures, including “reassignment” surgery, fail to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Likewise, inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted by leftists as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging so-called “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy;” therefore, “the advantage to [gender-confused men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Critics also warn that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, or changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status.