Congress enacted Title IX in 1972 to protect opportunities for women in education and extracurricular activities like athletics. Since 1972, Title IX has been effective in furthering that pursuit. More women have earned high school and college diplomas, and more schools have begun offering women’s sports in addition to men’s sports.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration radically attempted to rewrite Title IX and threatened to reverse this progress by depriving students—and particularly women—of opportunities and compromising their privacy and safety. One public school board, the Rapides Parish School Board in Louisiana, challenged the administration in court.
Biden administration’s new rule turns Title IX on its head
During his time in office, President Joe Biden led a wholesale effort to redefine the word “sex” in Title IX to include “gender identity.” Even though the Supreme Court explicitly said in its Bostock v. Clayton County decision that “transgender status” and “sex” are “distinct concept[s],” President Biden falsely declared that Bostock changed the meaning of all federal law banning sex discrimination to include gender identity “so long as the laws do not contain sufficient indications to the contrary.”
He also ordered all executive branch agencies to adopt this misguided view, and on April 29, 2024, the Department of Education issued a rule doing just that.
The new rule stated, in part, that Title IX applies to “discrimination against an individual based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
In practice, this radical new definition of “sex” in Title IX would have threatened girls’ athletics and allowed males who identify as female (and vice versa) to enter sex-specific private spaces like bathrooms and showers and participate in sex-specific education. This would make it impossible for schools to “accommodate the interests and abilities” of girls and women, as Title IX requires.
Rapides Parish School Board was harmed by the new Title IX rule
Rapides Parish School Board was directly affected by the Biden administration’s redefinition of “sex” in Title IX because the school board has multiple policies protecting women and girls that don’t fit under this new definition.
For example, Rapides Parish does not allow males to enter girls’ locker rooms and restrooms, participate in girls’ physical education classes, or room with girls during overnight field trips. In addition, the school board has a policy requiring any search of a student’s person to be performed by a teacher or administrator of the same sex as the student.
Under the Biden administration’s reinterpretation of Title IX, though, the rule required Rapides Parish to take steps to change these policies to allow males who identify as female to enter girls’ private spaces, room with girls on field trips, and more. The new rule would also have likely allowed a male student to be searched by a female teacher or a female student to be searched by a male teacher.
But such changes violated the school board’s policies about the importance of biological sex and could open the school board up to liability.
In addition to the schools, the new rule also violated the rights of teachers. For instance, the rule could have required teachers to refer to students by inaccurate names and pronouns that do not match their sex. Forcing teachers to lie to children like that violated the conscience rights of teachers.
Redefinition of ‘sex’ conflicts with Louisiana’s Fairness Act
The Biden administration attempted to dodge the issue of women’s sports by stating that schools were still allowed to maintain separate “male and female athletic teams.” But this caveat did not protect women’s sports.
While schools were allowed to have designated teams for girls, the administration made clear that “gender identity discrimination” fell under its definition of “sex discrimination.” In other words, even if a school had a designated team for females, it needed to allow a male athlete to participate on the team if he identified as female. And in case the rule left any doubt, the Biden administration argued in another Alliance Defending Freedom case, State of West Virginia v. B.P.J., that Title IX requires schools in West Virginia to allow a male athlete to compete on the girls’ sports team.
As a result, the Title IX rule directly conflicted with Louisiana’s Fairness Act, which states that “[a]thletic teams or sporting events designated for females, girls, or women shall not be open to students who are not biologically female.”
The school board wanted to comply with the Louisiana law, as has always been its practice. Furthermore, the Fairness Act is consistent with Title IX’s text and purpose. But under the Biden administration’s redefinition, which contradicted Title IX’s text, sports could not be uniformly designated by sex, and the federal government had the authority to preempt Louisiana’s law. If the school board chose to follow Louisiana law, the district could have been excluded from federal funding and liable to civil lawsuits.
For all of the above reasons and more, ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Rapides Parish School Board.
Thankfully, in June 2024, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction halting the Biden administration’s illegal attempts to rewrite Title IX. Then courts in two other ADF cases, Tennessee v. McMahon and Carroll Independent School District v. U.S. Department of Education, issued final judgments and vacated the Biden Title IX rule. Finally, once it took office, the Trump administration accepted these rulings and no longer sought to redefine sex. The case for Rapides Parish School Board was eventually dismissed.
The bottom line
The government shouldn’t force schools and states to jeopardize students’ health, privacy, and safety by pushing harmful gender ideology. When biological differences are denied, real people are hurt.
State of Louisiana v. U.S. Department of Education
- April 2024: After the Biden administration enacted a new rule redefining “sex” in Title IX to include “gender identity,” ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit challenging it on behalf of the Rapides Parish School Board.
- June 2024: A federal district court issued a preliminary injunction in the case, halting the Biden administration’s illegal attempted rewrite of Title IX while the lawsuit continued. The preliminary injunction protected Rapides Parish schools and all schools within the state of Louisiana, as well as schools in Idaho, Mississippi, and Montana.
- July 2024: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit rejected the Biden administration’s request to partially pause the district court’s injunction, meaning that the administration’s attempted Title IX rewrite would remain halted in the jurisdictions listed above.
- August 2024: The U.S. Supreme Court denied the Biden administration’s request to partially reinstate its attempted rewrite of the Title IX rule.
- November 2024: ADF attorneys representing the Rapides Parish School Board appeared before the 5th Circuit to defend against the Biden administration’s attempt to completely lift the district court’s preliminary injunction.
- January and February 2025: Courts in two other ADF cases, State of Tennessee v. McMahon and Carroll Independent School District v. U.S. Department of Education, issued final judgments and vacated the Biden Title IX rule.
- March 2025: Under the Trump administration, ADF, Louisiana, and the U.S. Department of Education agreed to dismiss this appeal.
- June 2026: Because of the positive final rulings in Tennessee v. McMahon and Carroll Independent School District v. United States Department of Education, the case was dismissed as moot.
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