WASHINGTON– On Friday, the Supreme Court put new regulations on gender discrimination in education on hold in about half of the United States, rejecting a request from the Biden administration.
The court voted 5-4 in favor, with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joining the three liberal justices in their dissent.
The discussions concerned the protection of pregnant students and students who are already parents, as well as the procedures that schools must follow when dealing with complaints of sexual misconduct.
The most notable of the new rules, concerning protections for transgender students, was not part of the administration’s petition to the Supreme Court, and they too remain blocked in 25 states and hundreds of colleges and schools across the country due to orders from lower courts.
The cases will be further heard before these courts.
In other U.S. schools and colleges, the rules came into effect on August 1.
Transgender rights — and especially those of young people — have become a key political battleground in recent years as transgender visibility has increased. Most Republican-controlled states have banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors, and several have passed laws restricting which school bathrooms transgender people can use and barring trans girls from some sports competitions.
In April, President Joe Biden’s administration attempted to resolve some of the disputes with an executive order protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ students under Title IX, the 1972 law against sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funds. The executive order took two years to draft and sparked 240,000 responses – a record for the Department of Education.
The rule states that it is unlawful discrimination to treat transgender students differently than their classmates, for example by restricting access to restrooms. It does not explicitly address participation in sporting events, a particularly controversial issue.
Enforcement of Title IX remains highly unsettled. In a series of rulings, federal courts have declared that the rule cannot be enforced in most of the Republican states that have sued while litigation is ongoing.
In an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court majority wrote that it declined to question the lower courts’ decisions that concluded that “the new definition of sex discrimination is intertwined with and affects many other provisions of the new rule.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that the lower courts’ orders were too broad because they “prevent the government from enforcing the entire statute – including provisions that have no identifiable connection to defendants’ alleged violations.”
