Texas, Louisiana join fight against Biden administration’s Title IX rule

Louisiana State Attorney General Liz Murrill on Monday said she had sued the Biden administration for its rule changes around enforcement of the landmark women’s rights law from 1972. The new Biden administration changes eviscerate Title IX and clash with the law’s original intention of protecting biological women from sex-based discrimination, she said at a press conference. Lousiana’s government would not pretend that there was another sexual category other than the two biological sexes of male and female, Gov. Jeff Landry added. 

What is the new Biden administration rule? The Biden administration earlier this month published new rules expanding a definition of sex-based harassment to include discrimination based on someone’s so-called gender identity. The rule would require schools and other institutions to cooperate with how individuals identify their own gender rather than categorize them based on their biological sex.

What is Louisiana seeking to do? Murrill said Louisiana is suing for injunctive relief to prevent the new rule from going into effect. In the same press conference with Murrill and Landry, Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley said schools were directed not to cooperate with the new changes to Title IX.

What are other states doing? Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday also sued the Biden administration, alleging that the new rules on interpreting Title IX were unlawful. Florida officials made a similar announcement on Friday.

Dig deeper: Read Liz Lykins’ report in Liberties about how Title IX could violate the due process rights of individuals accused of wrongdoing.