‘Abuse of Power’: Louisiana Officials Urge Legal Challenges to Biden’s Title IX Change
The Biden administration’s new Title IX rule allowing males to participate in women’s sports and share women-only spaces is an “abuse of power” violating the safety and order of society, Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley says.
“I choose to stand for girls and women in our state, as discrimination has no home under my watch,” Brumley said Thursday at a rally outside the Supreme Court celebrating the 52nd anniversary of the passage and enactment of Title IX. That U.S. law prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs across the nation.
In April, Louisiana became the first state to file a legal challenge against the Biden’s administration’s proposed revisions of Title IX, at the instigation of Brumley and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican.
Murrill was scheduled to speak later Thursday at a Heritage Foundation event focused on the Title IX changes and headlined by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.
The Biden administration’s revisions add “gender identity” to the list of sex-based protections. Although officials don’t include a formal definition of “gender identity” in the revised rule, legal experts say it would allow males to participate in girls’ and women’s sports, use female-only locker rooms and bathrooms, bunk with females in hotel rooms during overnight trips, and more.
Last week, a judge blocked the Title IX rule in Louisiana, as well as in Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho.
“I am grateful and proud to be able to say that we obtained the first injunction in the country, shortly followed by that issued to the state of Tennessee and another coalition of states, so I expect many more to follow,” Murrill said at the Heritage-sponsored rally and press conference.
“I think what’s unfortunate is that there will be a number of states who remain unprotected,” the Louisiana attorney general said. “And so I encourage anyone in those states to reach out to [Alliance Defending Freedom] or other organizations who are willing to fight for them so that they can obtain the same protections that their leaders in those states refuse to provide for them.”
A religious liberty law firm, Alliance Defending Freedom has filed five lawsuits against the Biden administration’s Title IX reinterpretation.
One of the worst things about the new rule is that in addition to requiring women to change clothes in the same locker room with males, women are threatened by discrimination lawsuits if they speak out, Murrill said.
“They are punished for complaining about it,” she said. “These rules do not just expose us to harm in some of our most private spaces, but they prohibit us from talking about it.”
Louisiana stands on the side of common sense by challenging the new rule, Brumley said.
“These reckless changes to Title IX have drawn a clear line in the sand for Louisiana,” the state’s superintendent of schools said, adding that the state also will “stand on the side of the First Amendment and on the side of equal opportunity under the law.”
The Biden administration’s reinterpretation of Title IX is contrary to state sovereignty and self-government, Brumley said.
“If these Title IX changes are enacted, state officials will be required to choose between enforcing their own laws, essentially protecting their own sovereign interest, or violating the federal government’s new gender identity mandate and Title IX,” he said.
