The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote on Friday, denied an urgent plea from the Biden Administration to enforce new Title IX standards that aimed to provide extra benefits for transgender students.
If approved, the request would have permitted individuals assigned male at birth to use women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories in 10 states where legislators have banned such behavior. In April, the Biden Administration made a comprehensive announcement, asserting that Title IX’s prohibition on “sex” discrimination in educational institutions extends to discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation, and “pregnancy or related conditions.”
Following the implementation of the law on August 1, a group of over twenty Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the administration, contending that it would contradict existing laws enacted by multiple states that prohibit biological males from participating in women’s sports. The Biden Administration contended that the recent verdict would not be applicable to athletics, despite specialists presenting compelling evidence to contradict this claim.
On Friday, the Supreme Court handed the Biden Administration a significant setback by reversing the extensive reforms.
“On this limited record and in its emergency applications, the Government has not provided this Court a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts’ interim conclusions that the three provisions found likely to be unlawful are intertwined with and affect other provisions of the rule,” the court wrote.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has conservative views, disagreed with his colleagues who share his ideology and instead sided with the court’s three liberal justices. He said that the lower court verdicts on the topic were excessively wide-ranging.
A cohort of 102 female athletes recently submitted a petition to the Supreme Court, urging them to make a decision on a legal dispute about state rules that prohibit biological males from participating in women’s sports. The petitioners highlighted the biological disparities that render equitable competition unattainable.
“A growing number of women and girls have been facing the humiliating and damaging experience of being forced to compete against males who identify as transgender in the women’s sports category,” reads a filing obtained by the Washington Times.
“It is hard to express the pain, humiliation, frustration and shame women experience when they are forced to compete against males in sport. It is public shaming and suffering, an exclusion from women’s own category.”
