A third judge blocks the feds' addition of gender identity to Title IX
Enforcement of a Title IX rule expanding discrimination protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity has been blocked temporarily in four states and a patchwork of places elsewhere by a federal judge in Kansas.
U.S. District Judge John Broomes suggested in his decision to issue a preliminary injunction Tuesday that the Biden administration must now consider whether forcing compliance remains “worth the effort.”
Broomes' decision was the third against the rule from a federal judge in less than three weeks but more sweeping than the others.
Last month, a federal judge in Kentucky temporarily halted the rule from taking effect in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, while a federal judge in Louisiana did the same for Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho.
Meantime, Florida has joined Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and four organizations to seek a preliminary injunction to stop enforcement of the change. The lawsuit, filed in April in the federal Northern District of Alabama, names as defendants the U.S. Department of Education and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. A hearing was held Monday but no ruling had been issued as of Wednesday night.
Broomes' order applies in Alaska, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming, which sued over the new rule. It also applies to a Stillwater, Oklahoma, middle school that has a student suing over the rule and to members of three groups backing Republican efforts nationwide to roll back LGBTQ+ rights. All of them are involved in one lawsuit.
Broomes directed the three groups — Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United — to file a list of schools in which their members' children are students so that their schools also do not comply with the rule. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican who argued the states' case before Broomes last month, said that could be thousands of schools.