U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty of Louisiana
threw a wrench in the Biden administration’s gears last year, both calling it out for assuming “a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth'” and temporarily prohibiting various federal agencies from conspiring to censor Americans’ speech online.
The Trump-nominated judge dealt the administration another blow Thursday, siding with the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho in their contention that the Biden Department of Education’s woke new Title IX rules — set to go into effect on Aug. 1 — are unlawful.
Doughty
found that the Biden DOE’s “Final Rule” is contrary to law under the Administrative Procedures Act; violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment; violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment; violates the Spending Clause; and “is arbitrary and capricious in accordance with Title 5 U.S.C. § 706 (2)(A) of the APA.”
Judge Doughty further rubbed salt in Democrats’ wounds, using their own
well-worn rhetoric against them.
“The abuse of power by administrative agencies is a threat to democracy,” wrote the judge.
The rules
According to the late Birch Bayh of Indiana, the Democratic senator who formally introduced Title IX to Congress in 1972, the
idea behind the original statute was to remedy institutional discrimination against women in federally funded education programs and activities. At the time, only 8% of American women had a college degree and only 59% had graduated from high school.
Having proven itself incapable of
defining what a woman is and is not, the Biden administration motioned to institutionalize its confusion countrywide with changes to Title IX that former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos suggested “guts the half century of protections and opportunities for women and callously replaces them with radical gender theory, as Biden’s far-left political base demanded.”
Blaze News
previously reported that under the new Title IX rules, issued on April 29, sex discrimination now includes sexual preferences and “gender identity.” Sex-based harassment now includes “harassment” on these bases.
The Biden DOE clarified that schools can no longer separate or treat people differently based on sex, stressing that preventing “someone from participating in school (including in sex-separate activities) consistent with their gender identity causes that person more than de minimis harm.”
As a consequence of these changes, many of which run roughshod over various states’ laws, every public school and college in the U.S. must allow male transvestites into women’s locker rooms and restrooms. A failure to do so could mean legal consequences.
Despite decades of gum-flapping about feminism, Democrats and their allies largely welcomed the changes. Over 20 Republican states, on the other hand, took a stand for women and girls, making abundantly clear to the Biden administration that they “will not comply.”
The ruling
Immediately after the issuance of the DOE’s “Final Rule,” dozens of Republican-run states filed suit.
Louisiana did so in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, requesting a preliminary injunction and/or restraining order against the rule’s implementation.
On Thursday, Judge Doughty obliged them and the other states that joined them, emphasizing that Title IX was intended from the start to “prevent biological women from being discriminated against in education in favor of biological men.”
‘Enacting the changes in the Final Rule would subvert the original purpose of Title IX.’
“It is clear in the text of Title IX itself, and in the decades-long impact of Title IX, that its enactment was created to apply to two sexes,” wrote Doughty. “There is nothing in the text or history of Title IX indicating that the law was meant to apply to anyone other than biological men and/or women.”
The DOE’s defense was apparently centered on a big and likely erroneous presumption.
Doughty suggested that the Biden DOE’s suggestion that
Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia supports their interpretation of “sex discrimination” under Title IX doesn’t hold water, noting the Supreme Court did not determine whether Bostock applied to other federal laws.
“This Court finds that the application of
Bostock and the Final Rule’s definition of ‘sex discrimination’ contradict the purpose of Title IX,” wrote Doughty. “Enacting the changes in the Final Rule would subvert the original purpose of Title IX: protecting biological females from discrimination.”
Doughty also acknowledged that the “harassment standard” created by the Final rule “is obviously contrary to Title IX” and could very well — as the plaintiffs argued — serve to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.
The judge further indicated that the DOE is way out of its depth in pushing a change of such “vast economic and political significance without specific congressional authorization.”
Statutory permission for an agency or official to ‘modify’ does not authorize basic and fundamental changes in the scheme designed by Congress, and instead that term carries ‘a connotation of increment or limitation,’ and must be read to mean ‘to change moderately or in minor fashion.’
The court ultimately concluded both that the Biden DOE lacked the authority to enact the rule and that the rule violates First Amendment rights. Doughty did, however, highlight other likely consequences of the Biden administration getting its way, namely that “by allowing biological men who identify as female into locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms, biological females risk invasion of privacy, embarrassment, and sexual assault.”
The Final Rule is enjoined and restrained from taking effect pending further orders from the court.
The response
Republican attorneys general celebrated the win.
Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill
stated, “This a victory for women and girls. When Joe Biden forced his illegal and radical gender ideology on America, Louisiana said NO! Along with Idaho, Mississippi, and Montana, states are fighting back in defense of the law, the safety and prosperity of women and girls, and basic American values.”
“I am grateful for this first-in-the-nation injunction on the Title IX rules, and that Idaho girls and women will be protected,”
said Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador. “With a single act, the Biden Administration threatened decades of progress and opportunities for females and jeopardized their rights to safety and access within our education system. This is a tremendous victory, and we are confident we will continue to prevail in court.”
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch
called it a triumph against the Biden administration’s “extremist political agenda.”
“For more than fifty years, Title IX has given girls an opportunity to compete on a level playing field and offered them a fair chance to excel,” wrote Fitch. “This injunction is a victory for girls across Mississippi.”
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen
suggested this was a win for girls and a reaction to Biden’s abandonment of “scientific reality.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) commended AG Murrill and
noted, “We must continue to fight back against this harmful gender theory that seeks to erase women.”
Bob Eitel, the president of the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies — the group that filed the lawsuit with the four states on April 29 —
expressed confidence that other courts and states “will soon follow.”
Gender ideologues and other LGBT activists are furious over the result, not least because the news came in their so-called “Pride Month.”
Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign,
said, “Today’s decision prioritizes anti-LGBTQ+ hate over the safety and well-being of students in the state. This is MAGA theatrics with the dangerous goal of weaving discrimination into law.”
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