Supreme Court Made ‘Huge Mess’ With Title IX Ruling: Legal Analyst

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on transgender rights in education is a giant mess that has left everyone confused, a legal analyst has said.
Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C, wrote that the court’s ruling on a pair of emergency applicants raises more questions than it answers.
The controversy involves the federal civil rights legislation, Title IX, which was introduced in 1972 to end discrimination against women in education.
The Biden administration introduced a “final rule for Title IX,” which would use those protections to end “sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.”
It has been met with fierce opposition in many conservative states, where parents argue it will lead to transgender students in women’s toilets and women’s sports teams.
In two lawsuits—Department of Education v. Louisiana and Cardona v. Tennessee—lower federal courts temporarily blocked the entirety of the new rules while the cases play out in appeals court.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear an emergency case from the Department of Education, which is seeking to lift those lower court emergency injunctions.
In a 5-4 majority decision on Friday, the Supreme Court declined a Department of Education emergency request to reinstate portions of the new rules that are not related to gender identity and sexual orientation, with the majority writing that they were not given “a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts’ interim conclusions.”
Conservative Neil Gorsuch joined liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent, arguing that the gender identity and sexual orientation rules should be paused during the appeals because they are related to alleged “injuries” suffered by the states, but the rest of the new rules should resume.
Writing in his Supreme Court blog, One First, Vladeck explained that he wanted to focus on Friday’s Department of Education v. Louisiana case because “it was literally the only ruling that the Court handed down last week and because it’s both a big deal and a huge mess.”
Vladeck’s problem with the ruling is that it freezes all of Biden’s new rules on Title IX, the vast majority of which has nothing to do with transgender rights.
“The rule does lots of other things … many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with gender identity,” he wrote.
He noted that the new rule helps clarify how existing Title IX cases should be handled in schools, “including measures to assist impacted parties, employee-notification requirements, Title IX coordinator duties, applicable grievance procedures, and protection of personally identifiable information. The Rule amends various administrative requirements, including recipients’ notice of nondiscrimination and record-keeping obligations.”
“The Rule strengthens protections for pregnant and postpartum students and employees, including by requiring access to lactation spaces and ‘reasonable modifications’ for pregnant students, such as restroom breaks,” he wrote.
“Friday’s ruling provides yet another object lesson in how poorly the justices have fared when grappling with complicated legal questions in the truncated context of emergency litigation,” he added.
He also wrote that the ruling “is yet another example of how poorly the Court fares when it tackles major questions through the ad hoc procedures governing emergency applications—with significant implications not just for Title IX’s effects in 10 states, but for how the Court handles similar questions going forward.”
In July, Texas became the 15th state to place a temporary injunction on the final rule.
The other 14 states with temporary injunctions are: Alaska, Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Federal district judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was nominated to the position by Donald Trump in 2017, wrote that the rule went against gender discrimination laws by placing transgender females in women’s spaces.
Kacsmaryk’s ruling came on the same day that the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a measure to kill the same federal rule.
Kacsmaryk agreed with the state of Texas, which sought a temporary injunction until a full ruling could be delivered.
“Pending final resolution of this case, Defendants are hereby ENJOINED from implementing, enacting, enforcing, or taking any action in any manner to enforce the Final Rule,” he wrote.