A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Biden administration from implementing directives that extend civil rights protections to LGBTQ students and workers.
The ruling comes roughly a year after a group of 20 conservative state attorneys general sued two federal agencies over their interpretation of the landmark 1972 civil rights law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive federal funding and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating against workers on the basis of race, religion, or sex.
Last year, those agencies, the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, following President Biden’s guidance, said the protections provided under Title IX and Title VII extend to gay and transgender people and would apply to workplaces and in schools.
In those directives, the agencies say companies and schools cannot deny a transgender person access to a bathroom that matches that person’s gender identity. They also said that students should be allowed to participate in a sports team consistent with their gender identity and that federally funded schools have a responsibility to investigate gender discrimination, including sexual harassment, against students because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The suit, filed by Herbert H. Slatery III, Tennessee’s attorney general, and joined by 19 other states, alleges that the government violated states’ authority to regulate their public workplaces and schools. The attorneys general also said the administration violated federal law by not following proper processes in implementing those mandates.
50 years of Title IX
The landmark gender equality legislation, which was signed into law in 1972, transformed women’s access to education, sports and much more.
The Biden administration has argued that the regulations are consistent with a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that said Title VII prevented employers from firing someone for being gay or transgender. The administration also asked that the case be dismissed in part because it has not begun to implement the guidelines.
Judge Charles E. Atchley Jr. of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, appointed by former President Donald J. Trump sided with the plaintiffs and rejected a motion to dismiss the case, issuing a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the directives until the courts decide the matter.
It was unclear what the next step would be. Judge Atchley said in his ruling that additional decisions could be made by his court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The judge’s ruling comes as many states debate and pass laws barring transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports. Eighteen states bar transgender youth from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a research group that analyzes local and state LGBTQ laws.
The Biden administration’s directives were part of a widespread effort by the White House to repeal or revise many Trump administration policies that restricted transgender rights.
In a 2020 Supreme Court decision, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person because he is homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual on the basis of sex.”
Before that decision, it was legal in more than half of the states to fire workers for being gay, bisexual or transgender.
State attorneys general argued in their case that power in these matters “properly belongs to Congress, the states, and the people.” Sided with the states, Justice Atchley wrote that their “sovereign power to enforce their own legal code is inhibited” by government guidance on civil rights law and that states face “substantial pressure to change their state laws as a result of this’.
The judge also wrote that the Biden administration’s directives went beyond what the Supreme Court ruling required.
Jennifer K. Pizer, acting chief legal officer of Lambda Legal, a national civil rights organization, said in a statement that the ruling shows a “disturbingly clouded view of this area of law,” adding that many federal court decisions have found that the federal gender discrimination standards applied in that case, and that the judge ignored the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which makes federal law “supreme” over conflicting state laws.
She also said that “for these many countries to claim so aggressively that they should be free to discriminate against their own residents is alarming and appalling.”
The states that joined Tennessee as plaintiffs were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Western Virginia.
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