WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Friday barred the Biden administration from implementing parts of a major order targeting gender discrimination in education, embroiled in lawsuits over protections for transgender students.
The court rejected the administration’s request to allow less controversial parts of the regulation, many of which have nothing to do with gender identity, to take effect in states where it has been challenged while lower courts wrangle contentious transgender issues.
“With this limited information and in its urgent filings, the government has not provided the court with a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts’ interim findings that the three provisions found to be likely unconstitutional are related to each other and affect other provisions of the rule.” read the Supreme Court opinion.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar had not asked the court to block lower court rulings that prevented the implementation of regulations that would allow transgender students to use restrooms that corresponded to their gender identity or that could result in requiring the affected people to use the pronouns preferred by the transgender person. These claims remain pending in those states.
The Supreme Court action does not apply to states that have not challenged the regulation and remain covered by the rule.
In addition to liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented in part from the majority order.
“By preventing the government from enforcing numerous regulations that defendants never challenged and that have no apparent connection to defendants’ alleged injuries, the lower courts exceeded their authority to remedy the separate harms alleged here,” Sotomayor said in the dissent. “The orders issued by this court place a greater burden on the government than is necessary.”
The controversial regulation was finalized by the Ministry of Education in April and applies to all educational units that receive federal funding.
In addition to recognizing protections for transgender students, the rule includes other provisions that were not contested, including new measures that apply to pregnant and postpartum students and employees. For example, the regulation requires pregnant students to access breastfeeding rooms and toilets.
A total of 26 states challenged the rule, and 22 won lower court rulings preventing the administration from fully implementing it.
The Supreme Court action involved defendants in two separate cases, one filed in Kentucky and the other in Louisiana, who had successfully blocked the entire set of regulations in their states.
A group of six states led by Tennessee, along with some individual plaintiffs, sued in Kentucky, while Louisiana led another lawsuit involving three other states and several local jurisdictions.
In both cases, federal judges blocked the regulation in its entirety as it applies to plaintiffs, and appeals courts refused to narrow the scope of the bans, prompting the administration to turn to the Supreme Court.
Prelogar wrote in court documents that the lower court judges erred in blocking orders that the challengers had not even focused on.
In addition, he argued that the Department of Education’s conclusion that gender identity is protected under Title IX should be upheld because, he said, gender identity, which he found to be a “direct application” of the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling, was protected under similar wording. Act VII, which covers employment discrimination.
The challengers argued in court filings that the entire statute should be blocked because, as Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill said in her filing, “the statute’s redefinition of sex discrimination permeates all 423 pages.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
