January 13, 2025
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration’s Title IX rules have been struck down nationwide after a federal judge in Kentucky found they overstepped the president’s authority.
In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves scrapped the entire 1,500-page regulation after deciding it was “fatally” tainted by legal shortcomings. The rule had already been halted in 26 states after a wave of legal challenges by Republican states.
The Biden administration ignited controversy when it finalized the new rules last year. The regulation expanded Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding discrimination based on sex in education, to also prevent discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. It also widened the definition of harassment to include a broader range of misconduct.
President-elect Donald Trump previously promised to end the rules “on day one.”
The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called it a rejection of the Biden administration's “relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology.”
“Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office,” Skrmetti said in a statement.
In his decision, Reeves found the Education Department overstepped its authority by expanding the scope of Title IX.
There’s nothing in the 1972 law suggesting that it should cover any more than it has since Congress created it, Reeves wrote. He called it an “attempt to bypass the legislative process and completely transform Title IX.”
The judge also found that it violated free speech rights by requiring teachers to use pronouns aligning with a student’s gender identity.
“The First Amendment does not permit the government to chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,” Reeves wrote.
Rather than carve out certain aspects of the rule, Reeves decided it was best to toss the regulation in its entirety and revert to a previous interpretation of Title IX. He said his decision will “simply ‘cause a return to the status quo’ that existed for more than 50 years prior to its effective date.”
Among the biggest critics of the rule was Betsy DeVos, former education secretary during Trump's first term. On the social media site X, she wrote that the “radical, unfair, illegal, and absurd Biden Title IX re-write is GONE.”
Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said Biden's rule “betrayed the original intent of Title IX by removing longstanding protections that ensured fairness for women and girls.”
“With President Trump and a Republican majority in Congress, we will ensure women and girls have every opportunity to succeed on the field and in the classroom," Cassidy said in a statement.
