TOPEKA – Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach secured a preliminary injunction today, halting the implementation of the Biden administration's Title IX transgender regulations.
The regulations would have required public schools to allow biological males who identify as females to use female locker rooms and compete in girls’ sports.
"Given... the evidence before the court, it is not hard to imagine that, under the Final Rule, an industrious older teenage boy may simply claim to identify as a female to gain access to the girls' showers, dressing rooms, or locker rooms so that he can observe his female peers disrobe and shower," Judge John Broomes wrote in the order.
Broomes, a Kansas federal judge, ruled in favor of Kansas and attorneys general from Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, and three private organizations: Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation, and Female Athletes United.
Kansas Attorney General Kobach personally argued the case on June 20.
"We have had many wins in court, but to me, this is the biggest one yet. It protects girls and women across the country from having their privacy rights and safety violated in bathrooms and locker rooms and from having their freedom of speech violated if they say there are only two sexes," Kobach said.
The federal district court injunction will have widespread effects. It prohibits implementing Biden's transgender regulations in the four plaintiff states and covers schools nationwide via the plaintiff organizations. These private organizations have members in all 50 states.
"The Department of Education's reinterpretation of Title IX to place gender identity on equal footing with (or in some instances arguably stronger footing than) biological sex would subvert Congress' goals of protecting biological women in education," Broomes wrote. "The Final Rule would... require schools to subordinate the fears, concerns, and privacy interests of biological women to the desires of transgender biological men."
Thousands of schools nationwide are likely affected by this ruling. If a single member of Moms for Liberty, Young America's Foundation, or Female Athletes United has students at any school in any state, that school cannot comply with Biden's Title IX rule. The organizations must notify the court by July 15 which schools are affected.
The Kansas Attorney General's Office stated that all Kansas school districts must abide by the court's injunction and cannot change policies to reflect Biden's Title IX transgender rule.