A federal judge in Alabama on Tuesday refused to block the Biden administration from implementing new anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ students in four Republican states, overruling six other judges who said the rules were invalid.
U.S. District Judge Annemarie Axon in Birmingham 122 page decision, Four states, led by Alabama, rejected various arguments that the U.S. Department of Education had made challenging the rules that the federal law banning sex-based discrimination in education applied to gender identity.
The rules also prohibit harassment of LGBTQ students, such as refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns, and change the procedures that schools must use when investigating allegations of misconduct.
Axon, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, said the claims by states and several conservative groups are conclusory and not supported by court precedent.
“Even if plaintiffs disapprove of the Department’s rulemaking, they have failed to show a substantial likelihood of success in proving that the Department’s rulemaking is unreasonable or not reasonably explained,” Axon said.
Only 26 states led by Republicans they sued according to the rule, is supposed to take effect on Thursday. There are six other judges blocked the rule from execution in 21 of those states pending the outcome of the underlying lawsuits.
Federal appeals courts declined to uphold two of those rulings, involving 10 states pending appeals by the Biden administration. The administration asked the US Supreme Court last week to temporarily overturn those orders.
The office of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, and the US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
When the Department of Education adopted the rule in April, it clarified that the prohibition against discrimination based on sex in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 also includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
This was reported by the Department of Education 2020 US Supreme Court decision Bostock v. Clayton County applied Title IX, holding that the prohibition against sexual discrimination in the workplace contained in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to gay and transgender employees.
Courts often rely on interpretations of Title VII when analyzing Title IX because both statutes prohibit discrimination based on sex.
But Alabama and other states that challenged the rule said Bostock was narrower than the department argued and that the agency lacked the authority to redefine the scope of Title IX protections.
States suing Tuesday, including Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, also argued that the rule would prohibit schools from segregating bathrooms and locker rooms by sex, forcing them to either violate their own laws to the contrary or forego federal education funding.
Axon said Tuesday that Title IX does not limit the definition of gender to biological sex, and that the Education Department’s interpretation of the law was reasonable in light of the Bostock decision. He also said the department has addressed bathroom concerns and other issues in the bylaws.
“Their basis is not that the Plaintiffs’ arguments overstep the bounds of the Department’s reasonableness, but rather that the Plaintiffs disagree as a matter of policy,” he said.
The case is Alabama v. Cardon, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, No. 7:24-cv-00533.