A federal district court in Kentucky recently slammed the door on the Biden administration’s attempt to mandate gender ideology throughout our educational system. The court’s decision last week in State of Tennessee v. Cardona is the first ruling that blocks the Biden Title IX regulation nationwide. It clears the path to restore privacy, safety, and common sense in our schools.
First, what did the Biden Title IX rule do? Among other things, this regulation from the U.S. Department of Education tried to change the meaning of sex in Title IX — the federal statute that bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in schools receiving public funds — to include gender identity.
The rule would have required almost every K–12 school and university in America to allow males into women’s locker rooms, restrooms, showers, and overnight accommodations during field trips. It also put a speech code on students and teachers who did not want to speak in favor of gender ideology — subjecting them to discipline for “sex-based harassment.”
The rule arguably affected sports, too, because you can’t redefine sex in the law protecting women’s sports without affecting those sports. After all, the Biden administration had already told courts that incorporating gender identity into Title IX would require schools to let men compete in women’s sports.
So, without any congressional approval, the Biden administration took a law passed in 1972 meant to protect women and girls and re-deployed it to harm them. The federal judge in Kentucky was having none of it.
As the court wrote, “[W]hen Title IX is viewed in its entirety, it is abundantly clear that discrimination on the basis of sex means discrimination on the basis of being a male or female. As this Court and others have explained, expanding the meaning of ‘on the basis of sex’ to include ‘gender identity’ turns Title IX on its head.”
“Title IX,” the court continued, allows “males and females to be separated based on the enduring physical differences between the sexes.”
Agreed. Men do not belong in women’s sports or private spaces. Period.
But what’s the practical implications here?
It’s a colossal win for women and girls. Just look at some of the clients my firm, Alliance Defending Freedom, represented in challenging the Biden rule. One 15-year-old girl in West Virginia lost the chance to compete in a track and field championship because a male took her spot. She was even forced to share a locker room where that male harassed her, subjecting her to vulgar sexual comments.
So far, that male athlete has finished ahead of nearly 300 female competitors in three years of track and field competitions. Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, an eleven-year-old girl stopped using the restroom for the entire school day because she so frequently encountered males in her private space. The Biden rule would have required schools to allow things like this nationwide. The Kentucky ruling stopped that.
The ruling is also a colossal win for federalism and the rule of law against the administrative state. The Biden rule would have invalidated countless state laws that protect student privacy and safety simply because some officials in Washington tried to shoehorn their gender-ideology agenda into a statute intended to protect women and girls.
For good reason, Tennessee, under the leadership of Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, led a coalition of states alongside ADF in the Kentucky lawsuit to protect their state laws. In fact, all across the country, states, students, parents, school districts, and female athletes rightly stood up to challenge the Biden rule. ADF alone filed five lawsuits, now securing the first nationwide win.
But our work defending common sense is not done. While the Kentucky ruling stops federal overreach pushing gender ideology in schools, it doesn’t stop states from passing bad policies or activist groups like the ACLU from suing to force women to compete against males in women’s sports, as they did in West Virginia and Idaho.
That is why it is critical for the Supreme Court to review those two cases, as Idaho, West Virginia, and ADF have recently asked the court to do. Only with a clear word from the Supreme Court can we finally protect women’s sports and spaces for good.
We certainly have more work to do, but we are celebrating this resounding legal victory as a great first step. After more than a decade of harm, the tide is turning. Culture is beginning to reject the lies of gender ideology and accept the truth. Let’s keep the momentum going.