Nine states with Republican leadership are legally challenging President Joe Biden’s amendments to include trans and nonbinary students as a protected group under Title IX. Last Monday, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho filed a joint lawsuit to dispute the new protections, and on Tuesday, Florida, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia filed their own joint suit. Texas is pursuing its own legal action against the Dept. of Education.
“Florida is suing the Biden Administration over its unlawful Title IX changes,” Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote in a statement. “Biden is abusing his constitutional authority to push an ideological agenda that harms women and girls and conflicts with the truth. We will not comply, and we will fight back against Biden’s harmful agenda.”
The U.S. Dept. of Education announced its plan to extend Title IX protections to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity explicitly, part of which includes allowing trans students to use the bathroom of their gender identity. In a positive and supportive statement aimed at potential LGBTQ+ students, Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a press call “no one should have to abandon their educational aspirations due to discrimination.”
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon confirmed the Biden-introduced regulations were necessary to protect all students across the country. “These regulations are an overhaul aimed at ensuring full protection under Title IX for all students,” Lhamon said.
States opposing the protections, however, claim the additional protections go beyond what Title IX is intended to do. Louisiana’s Secretary of Education Cade Brumley, in fact, told the state’s schools to “not comply with these radical rules from the Biden administration.”
LGBTQ+ advocates and allies have voiced their concerns surrounding these lawsuits. Sarah Jane Guidry, executive director of the Louisiana Forum for Equality, called out her state’s leadership for the stance it’s taking.
“Gov. Landry, Attorney General Murrill, and Superintendent Brumley have a callous disregard for the well-being and dignity of these vulnerable young individuals,” Guidry said, according to NOLA.com.
South Carolina’s State Superintendent of Education warned the state would be joining a legal challenge against the protections back in April, and encouraged state schools to ignore the Biden Administration’s new protections.
“South Carolina students are not pawns to be sacrificed in cynical political gambits,” Republican Ellen Weaver wrote. “Accordingly, our State will defend the inherent dignity of every person, while refusing to upend long-standing federal law, violate common sense, or acquiesce to radical attempts to redefine biological reality by bureaucratic diktat.”
It’s important to note Weaver served as President and CEO of the Palmetto Promise Institute (PPI), a conservative advocacy organization and “think tank,” previously known as the Palmetto Policy Forum and the Palmetto Fort Foundation.
The institute was founded by anti-LGBTQ+ former SC Senator and Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint in 2013. Weaver — who served as a staffer for DeMint — joined PPI in its beginning days, working her way to the president and CEO position prior to her role as South Carolina’s State Superintendent of Schools.
Chase Glenn, executive director of the Alliance for Full Acceptance, said the state seems to be going in a direction where its most vulnerable students aren’t protected.
“While Superintendent Weaver may not personally support the rights of LGBT+ students, she has the responsibility as the top school leader in our state to ensure that all students have equal rights and protections,” he said.