On Jan. 9, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves of Kentucky struck down the Biden administration’s 1,500-page regulation interpreting Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to bar discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, The Advocate reported.
Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. Last April, the U.S. Department of Education extended Title IX protections to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. At the time, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said this regulation aims to ensure that “no one should have to abandon their educational aspirations due to discrimination.”
More than two dozen Republican-dominated states had sued over the regulation, resulting in it being blocked in those states. Reeves’s ruling came in a suit that Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia filed.
The Biden administration had already withdrawn a separate proposal that would solidify transgender students’ right to be on sports teams that align with their gender identity.
President-elect Donald Trump previously promised to end the rules “on day one” and made anti-transgender themes a centerpiece of his campaign, NBC News noted. Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who served under Trump, posted on X that the “radical, unfair, illegal, and absurd Biden Title IX re-write is GONE.” However, on the social-media platform Bluesky, plenty of people aired grievances about the decision, including a user who stated, “Democracy is no longer about ALL people. Gender discrimination is legal. Welcome to 2025.”
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