Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured a significant victory against the Biden Administration’s Department of Education (DOE), halting its attempt to reinterpret Title IX to mandate the adoption of transgender policies in Texas schools.
In June 2023, Paxton filed a lawsuit against the DOE for issuing guidance that extended Title IX protections to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” This guidance would have required Texas schools and universities to permit biological males to use women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-specific spaces, with non-compliance risking federal education funding.
A federal court has now vacated this guidance nationwide and issued a permanent injunction against its enforcement in Texas. The ruling ensures that no school district in Texas will be compelled to follow the Biden Administration's interpretation of Title IX as including gender-identity requirements.
“Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Threatening to withhold education funding by forcing states to accept ‘transgender’ policies that put women in danger was plainly illegal. Texas has prevailed on behalf of the entire Nation.”
The court order stated: “[The Biden Administration] failed to follow the proper procedures here. Rather than promote the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes, [the DOE’s] Guidance Documents do the opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX.… Thus, to allow [the Biden Administration’s] unlawful action to stand would be to functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress. That is not how our democratic system functions.”
To read the order, click here.