Texas Border Business
AUSTIN, Texas – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has won a major victory against the Biden Administration’s Department of Education (“DOE”), stopping its attempt to rewrite Title IX to force Texas schools to adopt radical “transgender” policies in violation of state and federal law.
In June 2023, Attorney General Paxton sued the Department of Education for issuing arbitrary and capricious guidance that unlawfully extended Title IX to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes. This would have forced Texas schools and universities to allow biological males to use women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-specific spaces. Any Texas school refusing to follow the mandate risked losing federal education funding. Today, a federal court vacated the unlawful guidance nationwide and issued a permanent injunction against its enforcement against Texas and its schools. This ruling ensures that no school district in the State of Texas will have to comply with the Biden Administration’s interpretation of Title IX as including gender-identity requirements, including allowing men into women’s restrooms or locker rooms or sports teams, or requiring students or teachers to use pronouns based on gender identity rather than biological sex.
“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 explains: “[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.
