The Biden administration wants the US Supreme Court to step in and limit lower court orders that fully blocked it from extending protections against sex discrimination in education to transgender students.
In emergency requests on Monday, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asked the justices to partially stay rulings from federal district courts in the Western District of Louisiana and Eastern District of Kentucky.
Prelogar said the injunctions should be limited only to the two provisions the states and individual plaintiffs objected to.
The only provisions Prelogar said should remain blocked specify that schools violate civil rights protections in education by prohibiting transgender students from using the bathroom, or sex-separate facility that’s consistent with their gender identity, and define hostile-environment sex-based harassment to include harassment based on gender identity.
The district courts erred in extending its injunction to the provision that recognizes Title IX prohibits gender identity discrimination and also erred in blocking provisions of the rule that hadn’t been challenged, Prelogar said.
Other parts of the rule the government said should be allowed to take effect include those that clarify the definitions of terms in the Title IX regulations and amend administrative requirements.
Title IX is a federal civil rights law that was enacted in 1972 to prohibit sex-based discrimination in education programs.
The cases are US Dep’t of Education v. Louisiana, U.S., No. 24A78, 7/22/24 and Cardona v. Tennessee, U.S., No. 24A79, 7/22/24.
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