TOPEKA, Kan. — A federal judge in Kansas has stopped a rule that would have given LGBTQ+ students more anti-discrimination rights from being enforced in four states and a few other places.
In his decision on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John Broomes said that the Biden administration should now think about whether or not it is still “worth the effort” to force obedience.
In less than three weeks, Broomes’ ruling was the third by a federal judge to go against the rule. It was the most broad of the three. Alaska, Kansas, Utah, and Wyoming all have to follow it because they sued over the new rule. Also, a student at a middle school in Stillwater, Oklahoma, is suing because of the rule, and members of three groups are supporting Republican attempts across the country to take away LGBTQ+ rights. They are all charged in the same case.
Former President Donald Trump appointed Broomes. She told the three groups—Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation, and Female Athletes United—to file a list of schools where the children of their members are students so that those schools do not follow the rule either. That might be a lot of schools, said Kris Kobach, the Republican attorney general of Kansas who presented the state’s case before Broomes last month.
Title IX, a civil rights law passed in 1972, says that schools can’t treat students differently because of their gender. The Biden administration’s rule will go into effect in August. Even though the judge thought the states and three groups would probably win, Broomes’ order will stay in place until the case is tried in Kansas.
Republicans have said that the rule is just a trick by the Biden administration to let transgender women play on girls and women’s sports teams, which is against the law in Kansas and at least 24 other states. The government has said that sports are not affected. People who are against the rule have also said that it is about protecting girls and women’s privacy and safety in changing rooms and bathrooms.
Two of the founders of Moms for Liberty, Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, said in a statement, “Gender ideology does not belong in public schools. We are glad the courts made the right call to support parental rights.”
Transgender teens and young adults, their parents, healthcare workers, and other people say that limits on transgender teens and young adults hurt their mental health and make an already vulnerable group even more so. The Department of Education has stuck by its rule in the past, and President Joe Biden has said he will protect the rights of LGBTQ+ people.
An email sent to the Department of Education on Tuesday asking for comment did not get a response right away.
Along with Broomes, two other federal judges ruled in the middle of June that the new rule would not apply in 10 other states. By making sexual harassment at schools and colleges more general and giving victims more protections, the rule would protect LGBTQ+ students.
Broomes agreed with the other judges that the rule was arbitrary and that the Department of Education and its head, Miguel Cardona, went beyond what Title IX allowed. He also said that the rule went against the religion and free speech rights of parents and students who don’t agree with transgender students’ gender identities and want to say so in public, like at school.
Broomes wrote a 47-page order that tells the Biden administration “to decide first whether continued enforcement in line with this decision is worth the effort.”
Broomes also said that the rule could hurt the privacy and safety of kids who are not transgender. He used the middle school student from Oklahoma’s claim that trans boys used the girls’ bathroom “because they knew they could get away with it” as proof.
“Under the Final Rule, it’s not hard to imagine that a hardworking older teenage boy might just say he is female to get into the girls’ showers, dressing rooms, or locker rooms so he can watch his female peers undress and shower,” Broomes wrote, echoing a common but mostly false story told by anti-trans activists about gender identity and how schools help transgender students.
