[image credit: Olivia Anderson/The Texas Tribune]
A Texas federal judge this month ruled that the Biden administration had acted unlawfully in interpreting Title IX to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ students. The ruling preempts future action by the Education Department to prohibit discrimination in educational settings on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Judge Reed O’Connor’s Aug. 5 decision broadened an earlier ruling in June that struck down specific Biden administration rules intended to expand protections to LGBTQ students.
O’Connor, a President George W. Bush appointee, said the Biden administration overstepped its authority and that any new guidelines that expanded anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ students would be illegal in Texas.
“To allow Defendants’ unlawful action to stand would be to functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress,” O’Connor wrote in his Aug. 5 opinion.
“That is not how our democratic system functions,” he wrote, adding that, “the Department lacks authority to redefine sex in a way that conflicts with ..."
