A federal judge in Louisiana allowed four states to block the Biden administration’s revised Title IX rules favoring transgender students, citing concerns about the abuse of executive power and the impact on biological females.
Judge Terry Doughty criticized the rule for going beyond the intended purpose of Title IX and potentially causing discrimination against biological females.
“This case demonstrates the abuse of power by executive federal agencies in the rulemaking process. The separation of powers and system of checks and balances exist in this country for a reason,” Doughty wrote.
He issued a preliminary injunction to halt the rule, highlighting privacy and safety risks for cisgender students.
Doughty emphasized the need to consider all students’ well-being and criticized the rule for disregarding exemptions set forth in Title IX, raising concerns about the dominance of one political ideology in education.
“Title IX was enacted for the protection of the discrimination of biological females. However, the Final Rule may likely cause biological females more discrimination than they had before Title IX was enacted,” Doughty wrote. “Importantly, Defendants did not consider the effect the Final Rule would have on biological females by requiring them to share their bathrooms and locker rooms with biological males.
“The Final Rule only focuses on the ‘effect on the student who changes their gender identity’ and fails to address the effect on the other students (‘cisgender students’). These cisgender females must use the bathroom, undress, and shower in the presence of persons who may identify as females but still have male biological parts.”
Doughty noted that the department “declared in the Final Rule, with no explanation, that transgender students do not pose a safety risk for cisgender students.”
“By allowing biological men who identify as a female into locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms, biological females risk invasion of privacy, embarrassment, and sexual assault,” Doughty wrote.
“Allowing a biological male student to change to a female by simply declaring it, requiring no documentation of the change, and allowing the student to shower with cisgender females in the girls’ locker room goes beyond the scope of arbitrary and capricious.”
The rule “would render meaningless all of the Exemptions set forth in Title IX, such as traditionally one-sex colleges, social fraternities and sororities, voluntary youth organizations, one-sex youth service organizations, beauty pageants, and the exemption that allows educational facilities to maintain separate living facilities. Allowing this would allow decades of triumphs for women and men alike to go down the drain,” Doughty wrote.
