The Supreme Court voted 5-4 on Friday to reject an emergency request from the Biden administration to enforce parts of a new rule that includes anti-discrimination protections for transgender students under Title IX.
The request would have allowed biological males in women's bathrooms, locker rooms and dormitories in 10 states where there are state and local rules against it.
The sweeping rule was issued in April and clarified that Title IX's prohibition on “sex” discrimination in schools covers discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation and “pregnancy or related conditions.”
The rule came into force on August 1 and, for the first time, the law declared that discrimination based on sex includes conduct related to a person's personality gender identity.
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Sprinklers water the lawn in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on April 29, 2024. (Getty Images)
More than two dozen Republican attorneys general sued over the rule, arguing it would conflict with some state laws that bar transgender students from participating in girls' sports.
The Biden administration has insisted that the regulation does not address athletic eligibility. However, several experts presented evidence to Fox News Digital in June that Biden's claims that it would not result in biological males participating in women's sports were untrue and that the proposal would ultimately result in more biological males participating in women's sports.
The court's decision on Friday dealt a blow to the Biden administration's ongoing efforts to protect transgender inclusion.
“Based on this limited record and in its emergency applications, the Government has not provided this Court with a sufficient basis to alter the lower courts' tentative findings that the three likely unlawful provisions are intertwined with and affect other provisions of the statute,” the court's unsigned order states.
A transgender golfer doesn't understand athletes who blame a transgender competitor for their own sporting failures
President Biden during the White House Creator Economy Conference in the Indian Treaty Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on August 14, 2024. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented, agreeing with the three liberal justices and the Biden administration that the lower courts' rulings were “overly broad.”
Earlier this week, a group of 102 female athletes and 26 states asked the Supreme Court to accept a challenge to state laws that prohibit transgender women from competing against biological female athletes, according to a filing obtained by The Washington Times.
The petitioners argued that physical fitness tests demonstrate that there is a difference between men and women at any age.
“A growing number of women and girls are facing the humiliating and damaging experience of being forced to compete against men who identify as transgender in the women's sports category,” the athletes' submission said.
“It is difficult to express the pain, humiliation, frustration and shame that women feel when they are forced to compete against men in sport. It is a public humiliation and suffering, an exclusion from the proper category of women.”
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Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson attend a private ceremony for retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor before public repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court on December 18, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images)
Several other prominent sports figures have spoken out against the prospect of allowing transgender athletes to compete in women's sports.
ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit explained Tuesday in an interview on OutKick “Don't @ me with Dan Dakich” that “of course” she didn't believe men should participate in women's sports.
“I don't care about any of this anymore. It's almost like there are two different sets of rules, and if you have a little bit more of a traditional view, or if I'm a Christian, it's like there's a different set of rules for that view,” Herbstreit said. “It's hard to just turn the other cheek over and over again.”
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