President Joe Biden’s administration’s efforts to enforce new anti-discrimination safeguards for LGBTQ children have been thwarted by two conservative federal judges in Texas. This has prevented the regulation from going into effect in the Republican-led state and a school district that is represented by a Christian legal rights organization.
U.S. District Judges Reed O’Connor of Fort Worth and Matthew Kacsmaryk of Amarillo issued opinions on Thursday, following those of three other Republican-appointed judges in Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana that had blocked the law in fourteen other states.
According to a U.S. Department of Education regulation, discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is prohibited in addition to the prohibition on discrimination “based on sex” found in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
The Education Department referenced a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020, Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that gay and transgender employees were protected from sex discrimination in the workplace under Title VII.
Given that both Title VII and Title IX prohibit sex-based discrimination, courts have frequently looked to Title VII interpretations when interpreting Title IX.
However, Kacsmaryk—a Republican appointee of former President Donald Trump—concluded that Title VII does not apply to Title IX after siding with Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and two University of Texas at Austin academics.
He claimed that although the regulation would require Texas schools to stop segregating toilets, locker rooms, and other facilities based on biological sex, a close reading of Title IX’s wording makes plain that the main objective of the legislation was to prevent discrimination against women in public and higher education.
He wrote, “Title IX protects women in spaces that were traditionally reserved to men.” “By contrast, the Final Rule places men in Title IX spaces that are legally designated for women.”
He ordered a preliminary injunction that stopped Texas from enforcing the rule. On the social media site X, Paxton celebrated the ruling, saying it stopped the Education Department from “imposing radical ‘transgender’ ideology on Texas schools.”
O’Connor, a Republican appointee of former President George W. Bush, stopped the regulation from being implemented in 11 schools in the Carroll Independent School District in Texas in a different ruling that was rendered almost simultaneously.
“Over fifty years of progress for women and girls made possible by Title IX are undermined by the Final Rule,” wrote O’Connor. “Even worse, the Final Rule puts all students in danger—not just women and girls.”
The judges at Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group, had urged O’Connor to go one step further and postpone the rule’s implementation date of August 1. The judge stated that this remedy could need to be implemented nationally.
O’Connor postponed deciding on that matter and asked for more information by July 18 on how a stay would operate in this situation. O’Connor had earlier ruled that the department’s associated guidance was invalid.
In a statement, the Education Department supported the legislation, saying it was designed “to realize the Title IX statutory guarantee.”
State of Texas v. United States, No. 2:24-cv-00086, and Carroll Independent School District v. U.S. Department of Education, No. 4:24-cv-00461, are the cases in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.