The Supreme Court on Friday said it has rejected an appeal by the Biden administration and refused to lift injunctions in 26 conservative states that blocked new Department of Education rules extending anti-discrimination protections to transgender students.
The vote was 5-4.
The decision means that the federal education law known as Title IX will prohibit schools and universities in half the country from discriminating against students based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, but not in the other half.
Last month, Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar urged the court to allow the rules to take effect nationwide, except for the disputed provisions related to transgender student bathrooms and locker rooms.
But in an unsigned order, the court rejected his appeal on Friday.
The majority justices said they saw no reason to set aside the lower court rulings and temporarily rule that the rule could take effect nationwide while the lawsuits continue.
Conservative Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined the dissent with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
They said lower courts erred in preventing anti-discrimination rules from taking effect in all states.
New rules enforcing Title IX were scheduled to go into effect nationwide on August 1.
The 1972 law stated that schools and colleges that received federal funds could not discriminate “on the basis of sex.” The new rules, issued in late April, define that term to prohibit “discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
The administration relied on the high court's ruling from four years ago, written by Gorsuch, that said federal civil rights law prohibiting employment discrimination based on sex also protects transgender employees.
The new rules do not apply to school sports or sporting competitions. The Department for Education said it would consider those issues in a separate regulation.
The most controversial provision of the new rules says a school is considered to be discriminating on the basis of sex if it prohibits students from using a bathroom or locker room that is consistent with their gender identity.
Republican state attorneys general have gone to court to try to block the rules from taking effect.
Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill said the administration had taken “Title IX and its promise of equal educational opportunity for both sexes and transformed it into a 423-page mandate that (among other things) allows boys to be in girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms and hotel rooms and requires teachers and students to use the person’s preferred pronouns.”
She sued and won an injunction from a federal judge that blocked the new rules from taking effect in her state and three others.
“The text of Title IX shows that its purpose was to prevent biological females from being discriminated against in education in favor of biological males,” said U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana. He added that the Department of Education did not have the authority to redefine the law to apply more broadly.
In all, six federal judges have blocked the new rules in 26 states, and three U.S. appeals courts have upheld those preliminary injunctions.
The new anti-discrimination rules will take effect in California and Democratic states. Earlier, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and his counterparts in 14 other Democratic states had urged the Louisiana judge to uphold the broader anti-discrimination rules.
So far, the Supreme Court has declined to rule directly on the issue. However, the justices have agreed to decide in their next term whether states can ban the use of hormones and other gender-affirming treatments for transgender teens.
Republicans and Democrats have been divided for a decade over whether to extend anti-discrimination rules to transgender students.
The Trump administration declined to expand anti-discrimination rules under Title IX, but President Biden pledged to do so upon taking office.
In March 2021, he issued an executive order “ensuring an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex, including sexual orientation or gender identity.” He said the Department of Education should issue new Title IX regulations “as soon as possible.”
But it was not until April of this year that the final rules were issued.
In May, former President Trump said he would repeal them if re-elected.
“We’re going to end this on day one,” Trump said on a conservative radio show. “Don’t forget that was an order from the president. It was an executive order. And we’re going to change it, on day one we’re going to change it.”
