With just over a week left in Joe Biden’s presidency, a federal judge scrapped one of his signature education policies.
U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves, chief jurist for the Eastern District of Kentucky, ruled on Thursday that the administration’s rewrite of Title IX violated the Constitution. The 1972 law prohibits sex-based discrimination in K-12 schools and colleges that receive federal funding.
The federal Education Department’s interpretation of what constitutes sex-based misconduct was too broad, Reeves wrote, and the rules violated the First Amendment.
The ruling dealt a fatal blow to the hallmark regulations that had endured nationwide scrutiny from Republican politicians because of their explicit protections for queer and transgender students. It’s one of many pieces of Biden’s education agenda that faced insurmountable opposition or abandonment in the waning weeks of his term.
The Education Department did not immediately provide comment on the ruling Thursday.
The revised policies, which took years to finalize, expanded the criteria for sex-based discrimination to include gender identity. They also bolstered the rights of students who allege sexual harassment and assault, reversing Trump-era protocols that advocates had criticized because they made it harder for victims to prove their cases. The regulations provided fresh protections for pregnant and parenting students, too.
The rules took effect just a few months ago, in August, but only for some educational programs. A slew of lawsuits prompted court orders that halted them in a patchwork of states, school districts and colleges. The regulatory whiplash confused officials at institutions around the country who were worried about whether they were in compliance with federal laws.
“It’s a very fluid legal environment,” Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, told school administrators the day the rules took effect. “To be clear, we plan to enforce the 2024 regulations starting today, except where they are enjoined.”
Those instructions from Lhamon are now moot. And conservatives are rejoicing.
“All of America is now safe from Biden’s attempt to undermine half a century of landmark protections for women,” wrote Jason Miyares, Virginia’s GOP attorney general, in a post on X. Opponents of the Biden-era rules have said that expanding civil rights protections beyond the basis of biological sex would negatively impact women and girls, while supporters say they would simply add a much-needed shield for LGBTQ+ students, who face disproportionate harassment. Virginia was among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that spurred Thursday’s court order.
The federal government can appeal Thursday’s ruling, but Biden’s days in power are numbered as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office on Jan. 20.
“This essentially hands them a ruling that they’re not going to contest,” said Neal Hutchens, an education professor at the University of Kentucky, referring to the incoming Trump administration.
Shiwali Patel, a former attorney in the Obama administration’s Office for Civil Rights who resigned from the Education Department in Trump’s first term, called the judge’s decision Thursday a “huge setback” that will ultimately harm students.
“I hope that they will continue to try to fight back,” she said of the Biden team. “But the reality is that there really isn’t much time for it left.”
Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kentucky judge halts Biden’s Title IX rules nationwide