Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s dissenting opinion in opposition to the conservative court’s majority decision denying the Biden administration’s request to block a lower court’s injunction on Title IX rules has stunned conservatives on social media.
In a 5-4 decision on Friday, the court rejected an emergency motion by the Department of Education (DOE) to reinstate provisions of the Biden administration’s executive order that would have included gender identity and sexual orientation as protected categories under Title IX, a law that protects against sex-based discrimination in schools.
The Biden administration’s changes to Title IX of the U.S. Constitution have prompted several Republican attorneys general to block implementation of the rule, which took effect nationwide on August 1. Due to the lawsuits, enforcement of the rules is currently prohibited in a total of 26 states.
Gorsuch, who was nominated by then-President Donald Trump in 2017, broke with the conservative justices and joined the dissenting opinion of Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Sotomayor wrote the dissent, claiming that the “injunctions were too broad” and should be limited to specific challenged provisions rather than the entire rule. The dissent called for “more tailored relief.” The case will now be remanded to a lower court.
Newsweek filed an online contact request form with the Supreme Court on Saturday seeking comment via email.
Meanwhile, Gorsuch’s actions have drawn criticism from some conservatives on X, formerly Twitter.
Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, shared a social media post celebrating the majority’s decision and asking, “What happened here to Judge Gorsuch?”
Macy Gunnell, a correspondent for the conservative news website Campus Reform, expressed a similar sentiment to Lee’s X-Post, writing, “Can someone check in on Gorsuch… what happened here?”
Another X user, Domenica D’Elia, whose biography celebrates Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement, wrote: “Neil Gorsuch has joined the other three liberal justices. Why he would join these liberals is odd.”
User @ProudElephantUS, who has over 393,000 followers on X, called the dissenting judges “the usual suspects” in a post Friday evening.
Meanwhile, Friday’s decision gives no indication of how the Supreme Court will rule on the new Title IX rules, including those related to gender identity and sexual orientation.
“While we disagree with this ruling, the Department stands by the final Title IX regulations that will be published in April 2024, and we will continue to defend these rules in the expedited proceedings in the lower courts,” a DOE spokesperson said in an earlier email to Newsweek“Schools in the 24 states that are not prohibited from doing so are required to comply with the final Title IX regulations in 2024, and we look forward to working with school communities across the country to ensure that the nondiscrimination in school guaranteed by Title IX is experienced by every student.”
While lawsuits from Republican states focus on alleged “irreparable harm” caused by things like allowing transgender students to use restrooms that correspond to their gender identity, the Biden administration’s new Title IX rules also include several completely unrelated provisions whose enforcement is currently blocked in many states.
Biden’s Title IX rules also include a ban on discrimination based on pregnancy and breastfeeding, a requirement for schools to accommodate breastfeeding students, allowing foster parents and other authorized caregivers to legally represent minors, and a ban on schools retaliating against students who file Title IX complaints.
In 2021, Gorsuch joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s then-four liberal justices in ruling that gender identity and sexual orientation are included in the prohibition of sex-based employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.
